


Desolation Angels

by autopsy_mauve (AlexRoyale)



Category: True Detective
Genre: M/M, Post-Series, Rating May Change, Work In Progress, post-carcosa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2018-04-06 16:35:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 40
Words: 56,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexRoyale/pseuds/autopsy_mauve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-What is connection?</p>
<p>-When 2 motions, thought<br/>to be infinite & mutually<br/>exclusive, meet in a<br/>moment.</p>
<p>-Of Time?</p>
<p>-Yes.</p>
<p>-Time does not exist.<br/>There is no time.</p>
<p>-Time is a straight plantation.</p>
<p>    -- Jim Morrison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Awake

Among clean white sheets and flower bouquets, and Get Well balloons, Marty smells dirt.

Not soil. Dirt. Soil helps things grow and thrive. Dirt is dirt. What gets thrown on your grave. What you scrub away.

Marty smells dirt, peeled bark and rot. Copper, and sulphur, and a briny scent that stings his nose. Underneath there's the hospital smell ; disinfectant, new plastic, latex gloves.

Even the water tastes like a hospital -- sealed away, devoid of real air, of any living smells.

After Maggie, Maisie, and Audrey leave, Marty cries again. His room is lit soft, and outside the windows there's darkness. Near his door, there are patches of it. The line of light under his door he claims as a border. Marty stares at it and his breath stutters when it darkens with passing footsteps.

Marty thinks of Purgatory. That that is where he is now. The bed is a farce. Seeing Maggie, and his girls was a dream. Doesn't know why Gilbough and Papania would show up - a little jesting 'haha' from the Almighty? That he'll be cycling through an endless Saturday, where it's always May the first, of two-thousand-and-twelve, only to end later on an earthen floor full of blood, and rot, and fear.

Rustin Cohle would have an answer for this, but Martin Hart does not.

Marty thinks of Rust, and there's nothing but the salty burn behind his eyes, burrowing into his head and trickling into his blood.

His last words in Carcosa had been _Rust_. Soft at first when the flare peaked, and then loud and panicked when he'd seen the flashlights, heard the voices and the running feet and the muffled cursing. Rust had gone still, and Marty kept calling. Marty thinking the louder he shouted, perhaps it'd echo and follow wherever Rust went.

That maybe he could call him back.


	2. Undone

  Rust wakes up four days later, in the evening.

 

The clock on the wall, above his windows, meant nothing.  He mimics its blank, staring face.

 

 His attending doctor marvels at his resilience and Rust nods in all the right places so that the guy'll leave and Rust can return to feeling like he failed.

 

 He couldn't even die right.

 

 He watches news on television and cuts his eyes to the windows when it gets too much. The shots of the state forensics team fills his mouth with wax. 

 

His bones feel lined with lead. The drugs that help him sleep don't take him deep enough. He doesn't dream from whatever pharmaceutical margarita that's pumped into his veins, but there's no Oblivion either. There's no void. No release.

 

Rust asks about Marty. He's told Marty is getting better, and that he should be out later in the week.  The nurse checks his IV line and adds that she'll see if Marty can visit - if Rust feels up to it.

 

 He slides his eyes to the television, and back to the windows. He considers telling the nurse that he's gonna see Marty before he leaves this place, and there's nothing that can stop that.

 

 He's not supposed to be here, but for this final spin through his life cycle, he's gonna see Marty before he goes.

 

 That's just how it is.


	3. Crawl

 

Four days in that goddamn bed was too many for Marty's liking. Beds are great, and they're useful, and he usually has a good time in and around them, but hospital beds occupy a space just behind the dentist chair on the list of places Marty would rather avoid.

He wobbles on his way to the toilet, determined to not break anything that will require an extended stay. If he breaks a toe, he's keeping his fucking mouth shut.

There are few things that Marty would list as enjoyable under certain circumstances -- until recently, taking a piss standing upright was never something that made his eyes roll back in bliss, but that catheter was one long taste of misery. He can walk ten steps and use the bathroom. He's that much closer to getting out.

Wobbling back to his bed, Marty catches the evening nurse coming into his room. He puts his hands on the bed rail and squeezes. She's not gonna tell him where Rust is. No one will tell him the room, and he's been a broken record, variations on a theme, with asking.

The nurse casts her eyes up and down, and notes the way his legs shake and his flexing grip on the bed rails. She peeks out the door and holds his gaze.

Marty's eyebrows go up as he starts to ask his question, and before he can say Rust's name she holds up a hand and tells him.

"He woke up."

Three words that float like feathers and land like hammers.

Having been nearly killed by the latter, Marty keeps his feet. His body is one prolonged tremble of relief, exhaustion, and hope.

He starts for the door, "What room's he in?"

Her hands come out in a gesture of Stop. "Just a second. I'll be right back."

Marty nearly gnaws through his right cheek at the ramping tension in his neck and shoulders. He's gonna be out that door before she gets back, and he doesn't give a goddamn if his ass is hanging out of his gown.

He makes it to the door, and leans heavy on the frame. She's back in his line of sight, waving to him and wheeling a chair over.

He maneuvers himself into it after she secures his gown. The chair's cold, but it's not that goddamn bed. The nurse pops the other handbrake and they're off. He reaches for the wheels and she admonishes him -- "Your shoulder, Mr. Hart. Your stitches. Careful!"  
He allows himself to be pushed. He's going to see Rust.

Nine doors down, they stop.

Marty looks back toward his room.

"I know it doesn't look far, but that's why I brought the chair. Four doors down, I think you'd have to crawl, " the nurse tells him.

He looks again, down the hall. Imagines the shiny floor covered in broken glass, broken branches, dirt, new and old blood, razor blades, blazing coals.

Marty doesn't answer her, and reaches for the door handle.

Because he would. If she'd told him earlier, he damn well would have.


	4. Thread

  
When Rust opens his eyes, he startles the attending nurse. She's leaning over him, checking readouts when she feels a hand touch her wrist.

She fumbles for the mint swabs and when his lips move she has to lean back in. Corroded cogs are turning in his throat until she helps him drink flat water from a paper cup. He rasps two words. And then three. The nurse nods but her eyes are questioning. She steps into the hallway and returns with another nurse and a doctor.

Rust shuts his eyes and when he opens them again, three faces are peering at him. He meets each gaze in turn, until even the doctor takes a step back.

"Mr. Cohle?"

The second nurse turns to the first and whispers, "Did he say anything when he woke up?"

Rust starts turning his cup by the base in small half-motions.

"Mr. Cohle, " Rust drawls, "asked about Mr. Hart."

He stops moving the cup and flicks his switchblade gaze to them, "Marty Hart. Martin. Eric. Hart. Now, what're y'all gonna do about that?"

  
What they do is bring several people who aren't Marty. They wash him. Check his bandages -- the goddamned thing starts at his sternum and covers everything to his hips. Rust feels like meat dressed for burial. He takes the toothbrush from the nurse and scrubs four days of grime from his mouth. The sides of his teeth feel like algae-coated rotting logs. Twenty minutes later - he looks at the fucking clock and thinks _programming_  while he brushes again. There's a tiny parody of a shot glass filled with greenish blue liquid. He thinks about knocking back the mouthwash neat and wondering what shit the staff will get up to if they think he's poisoned himself.

He debates asking for the bottle of Scope, and when he puts the liquid in his mouth he finds there's no point -- there's no alcohol in it. There's no burn.

He's woken up and the world has alcohol-free mouthwash.

Minty-fresh fucking hell, and still no Marty.

Rust had gotten a good look at the black lined seam holding him together. He thinks about picking at his bandage until he can see it, until he can pull at that thread to watch it unravel. When it unravels, he can go back to sleep.

Another nurse hands him a TV remote, says there's a news story he might be interested in.

He doubts that.

Rust turns his head to the windows, sees his darkly-tinted reflection look back.

Pelican Island.

_This world is a veil, and the face you wear is not your own._

**Take off your mask.**

_You were as blind to him as your footprints in the ashes but he saw you._   
_In every disguise, every gesture false or true, in every silent resentment, he saw you in those dark corners._

Rust turns from the window to the open door, and closes his eyes. Hot salt gathers under his lashes.

Marty. Marty calling to him. Marty's fingers at his temples, hands stroking at his hair while the world went dark as the sky lit up.

_And we bandage our soft selves in hardness and anger._   
_You are a stranger to yourself and yet he knows you._   
_And when your hard heart made you like unto the stone and broke you from his body which is the stars and the wind between the stars, he knew you. He knew you yet and forever._


	5. Unsaid

  
Marty grips the door handle, nearly pulls himself out of the wheelchair until his nurse sits him back down and opens the door for him. She moves a little doorstop with her foot as she pulls him inside. Marty uses his feet to propel the chair, since she was giving him hell for using his arms.

She stops him for a moment and pulls some curtains back. The wall lights illuminate the bed, but beyond the bed are gradients of shadow bleeding to the light-speckled black out the windows.

With a hand on his arm, she whispers, "Five minutes. You can come back in the morning."

He inches closer when she's gone.

Marty hangs his head after his first good look at the bed. His breath rattles out peppered with sobs.

The violet-black smudges that are Rust's eye-sockets. The swath of white from his chest down. Marty sees one black feathertip underneath Rust's bandaged right arm and that does him in further. The sight makes him think the worst. That bird will never fly again.

Marty reaches out to touch Rust, with one eye on the monitors. If there's the slightest alarm, Marty's gonna holler down the walls. When his right hand slides over Rust's, Marty stretches his left hand forward to stroke that inky wingtip. He closes his right hand over Rust's and whispers, "You're gonna be okay. You don't get to leave me yet, you hear me? Reckon my bedside manner fuckin' trumps yours, but goddamn you, Rust, don't you fucking leave me again. Ain't fair, you rolling back into my life startin' shit and not finishin' it.  
You're not done. I'm not gonna let you slip out on me."

His voice shatters at the end, and he lets go of Rust's hand as the nurse bustles back in. Marty props his hands up by his face and says nothing while she wheels him back to his room. All her manufactured cheer feels like sandpaper against his eyeballs.

Marty dreams.

A wave of invisible voices. A house of death and rot and ruin, piled with the deitritus of stolen lives. Endless halls of pine freshener and the thin, high giggle of the lost and the damned. Peeling wallpaper turns to branches and long grass, and jungle. Sticky heat and bloating , fly-blown putrescence. He calls out to Rust, and hears him answer. Marty calls again, and Rust calls back, but Marty can't find him. Tomb-scent of Carcosa in his throat and another voice reaches him.

 _He's gonna come for you. He's worse than anybod_ y.

**Where is he?**

_All around us. Before you were born and after you die._

**Where's Rust?**

_Following the Yellow King..._

Marty starts running. Branches turn to skeletal fingers and he's moving so quickly he can't tell the difference. If he stops, he's dead. A white shrouded corpse crumbles off a post as he passes, death-powder fingers reaching and turning to dust all at once.

 _Call 'em devil nets. Put 'em round the bed so to catch the devil if he get too close_.

Carcosa is the devil's net writ large, to Taj Mahal proportions. The rest he and Rust found were blueprints.

Marty stumbles and holds his gun out. He hears groaning agony and knows it's Rust. That he's too late.

He's pinwheeling around, losing his footing and his gun, and there's a burning pull high on his chest.

The Yellow King has no face. There's a gaping, cannon-mouth maw leaking with blackness and death.

Marty waits for the final strike. One word pealing through his brain. His first and last thought for ten years.

Then comes the gunshot.

Marty's eyes fly open and he can't get his breath.

Maggie drops her purse and steps back from his bed, silent with a hand to her mouth.

"Marty? God, Marty, are you okay?"

Marty turns his head to her on his pillow and his eyes are wet, and red as he says, "No."

He looks past Maggie, out past a thousand yards of sun-drenched faded memories, past the flaps of a revival tent and a lone, visible voice.

_This, all this, is not real. It is merely the limitation of our senses which are meager devices._  
_Your angers and your griefs and your separations are a fevered hallucination, one suffered by us all we prisoners of light and matter._  
_Here we are, our faces pressed to the bars looking out, looking up, asking the question, begging the question, are you there?_  
_Would that we had ears to hear because every moment, every now, is an answer._  
_Every beat of every heart, every second of every minute, every minute of every hour, every hour of every day is an answer._  
_And the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes!_  
_Your sorrows pin you to this place._

.


	6. Lost

 Seventeen years of marriage leaves little room for interpretation, but as Maggie waits for Marty to calm down,  
the reality tugs at her - the Marty she's accustomed to dealing with is not the man in the bed before her.

Marty's thumbs brush at his eyes, then he gives up and swipes his palms across his face, exhales with a loud sniffle.

Maggie pushes a chair to his bedside and sits. Her fingers find top of her purse, and she drags it along the floor to rest by her feet.

"What do you need?"

She reaches out a hand to Marty. He takes it, notes that it's her right hand and absent of rings. He squeezes reflexively and gives her a watery smile in answer.

"You've done more than enough, Mags -- " he corrects himself, " -- Maggie. Don't need anything. Was a bad dream, nothing else."

"Marty, what happened?" Her face is calm but her eyes are filled with worry.

He's unsure at first whether she's referring to his nightmare, or Carcosa, or to their truncated shared life to this point, and he stares at her.

"I went by that bar. Where Rust works. I was worried about you."

Marty rubs his right thumb and forefinger together as she talks. He doesn't look at her.

"I asked him to promise me that you wouldn't get hurt."

At that, Marty does look at her.

He clears his throat, and his fingers continue their rhythm, "You can't ask anyone to promise  
that. It's not a promise anyone can make, and it sure as shit ain't one anyone's ever kept."

Maggie covers his hand with her left, stilling his fingers. He looks at her rings, and Maggie sees something in his face -- sadness, regret, resignation, she's not sure.

He meets her eyes, a small smile tugging at his mouth, "How're the girls? How's Ted?"

Maggie squeezes his hand in hers, and her smile is soft. For that moment, Marty's just returned to their dinner table in '95. The feeling is strong enough that he thinks to look over and see Rust spearing broccoli with his fork as Audrey asks why the adults don't have to eat any.

"Ted's in the cafeteria. Audrey and Maisie are at the house for a few weeks. They want to see you -- either here, or when you're out."

Marty's answering smile is less water and more gap-tooth, and it stretches to his eyes.

"I'd love that. That'd be...that'd be nice."

Maggie gets to her feet, Marty still holding her hand as he asks, "And how're you, Maggie? You happy?"

It's a small nod she gives him, and her head tilts one way and then the other, "Things are good. The girls are happy."

Marty leans forward and kisses her hand, breathing orchids and mint. He looks up at her and this time it's her eyes that are shiny.

"Marty..." Maggie says, her voice small and choked, "You came to say goodbye. Why?"

He stares out the window, counting curtains for nine rooms and stops, "Felt like something was winding down. Closing out."

"And Rust?"

The window blurs and the curtains bleed together and Marty wheezes, hating the way he folds in on himself at the mention of Rust.

Maggie starts forward and stops when Marty speaks. His head is lowered and he hugs his knees, " I lost him." She hears the break in his voice and what rushes out is punctuated with sharp hiccups and stutters.

"I lost him. He said...he said to clear the house and _I lost him_. I went in the house to find the phone and there was this... _this_...I hear her _laughing_. I called for backup and I ran after Rust. I lost him. And I called for him and he answered, and I called him again...and I heard him again, and by the time I .... I saw... I saw... I had six fuh-fuh-fucking bullets in my goddamn gun and couldn't get it done. I couldn't catch up and I couldn't ...I was gonna die and Rust had a knife in his guts and he put Childress down."

She doesn't remember blinking once. There's a stinging in her eyes and she has to look away. When she looks back, Marty's eyes are on the ceiling, far away.

" ' _He cut me pretty good, Marty.'_ And all I say is ' _it ain't bad. It ain't bad."_

 His voice makes Maggie's mouth tremble as it drops to a whisper, " _It ain't bad."_

Maggie says his name, but he speaks like he doesn't hear her, "I lost him ten years ago, he was bleeding and the last word he said to me was my name. Ten years later, " Marty waves a hand and grimaces, "same fuckin' shit. Closin' out. Flat fucking circle."

Marty doesn't hear her leave.


	7. Adrift

  
Rust is awake for as long as he can hold off the night nurse adjusting his I.V. drip. Visiting hours are winding down and he's stopped listening for footsteps in place of squeaking rubber wheels. At quarter to nine his door cracks open, and he lets out a slow breath that drops to a husking cough when he sees Maggie Sawyer enter. Rust leans back on his bank of pillows and hoods his eyes. Maggie doesn't miss a thing. She picks a spot and holds her ground.

Rust knows what he wants to say, but he doesn't need to say any of it. He wants to say that she's always had a knack for interacting with him at his most charming --whether it's at a dinner table, a kitchen counter (context is key on that one) or a roadside bar. Maggie's gaze starts out clinical by instinct and changes the longer she looks at him.

If she starts crying, he's gonna tell her to get the fuck out. He doesn't want anyone's tears or goddamn pity. If anyone's gonna cry for him, it's gonna be himself. Preferably after he's seen Marty and gotten in his truck and returned to Alaska. There's a spot in Juneau that's perfect. He'll lay in the truck bed and go to sleep looking at the borealis paint the night sky the proper shade of blue. Then he'll wrap himself in that deep, warm darkness and fade out.

He won't be missed, and Marty might not find out for a long time. It's for the best, really.

Maggie says, "Rust..." and he can't help the way his eyes feel like twin shotgun barrels. Maggie meets his gaze and waits for him to pull the trigger.

"Kinda feels like a funeral viewing, don't it?"

Rust wants a cigarette and fights the urge to take his pulse.

Maggie crosses her arms, cupping her elbows.

When Rust feels she's not going to start firing back at him, he relents. He pops his angry thoughts free of the barrel of his throat like  
rock salt cartridges.

"How's Marty?"

Maggie clasps her hands together as she answers, "He's hurting."

Rust doesn't blink, "Hammer in the shoulder will do that. PTSD aside, there's no way to come outta that place and not be missin' pieces."

"It's about you. He's worried about you."

"What for? I ain't dead."

"He said he lost you, in that place."

Rust turns his head away, "And yet here I am."

"He said he lost you ten years ago."

Maggie's words funnel him through a kaleidoscope that starts with a flying tackle in a parking lot that coasts into a roadside bar, a storage shed, a sun-drenched office, a boat, a passenger seat of a Cadillac and a flare-lit killing floor.

The night nurse enters and then Rust turns back to Maggie, "Marty shouldn't grieve for something he didn't lose."


	8. Gossamer

 

Marty closes his eyes and breathes slow through his nose. Now he's really freaked Maggie out. He couldn't stop himself, everything had to come out. His heart feels like a balloon in his chest -- it swells near bursting, then deflates. That shit he said, he hadn't planned on saying it, and didn't even know he'd said it til he'd felt his lips moving and noticed Maggie was gone.

Probably gonna get the nurse and tell her to add some sort of counselor to his recovery. And he'll have shit to talk about but it ain't gonna be any of the shit he needs to talk about.

Marty scoffs at the thought of talking to anyone but Rust about the shit that went down. They could try and make him swear on the Bible and still not get the whole truth. Because some truths aren't for everyone, and most truths that Marty admits to himself, that he can count on one hand, are truths he'd only ever tell Rust, or to the darkness of his room.  
He needs to see Rust. With his eyes open. Because Marty's eyes are open and everything is different.

Ledoux and Dewall -- that was a controlled ambush. Everything was touted in Rust and Marty's favour. The narrative was tailored. There is the truth as they told it, and the truth as they know it.

Carcosa is the truth they could not escape. Marty remembers a poem from high school, that one fucking poem everyone fucking forgets that they remember.

That axis in the widening gyre, with its fragile center that doesn't hold. Marty dreams he's the falconer and Rust soars away, wings cut by branches but his talons out and ready to hunt.

Carcosa baited Rust to come inside and Marty followed. The mantra as Marty ran became _Fuck you you ain't doin' this without me_ , and changed to _Fuck this I ain't leavin' without you._

Marty admits to himself in the dark, where no one can see and he doesn't have to hide his tears, that he'd felt present with Rust around now. He didn't have to wear a face that wasn't his. He'd been so mortified and depressed by the state of his life he'd cut contact with Maggie for two years. Sealed himself away in a one-bedroom apartment with a lumpy couch and a T.V tray and told himself the lie that he'd be okay. Ten-thousand hours is supposed to be some sort of expert-level accomplishment in a chosen task. Marty's lied to himself for so long that the fabric he spins stories with is no longer velvet but sheer gossamer. Hold that shit up to any light and you see right the fuck through it.

January the third, two-thousand-and-ten, Marty had sat up til nine in the morning staring at his dark reflection in his television screen with a bottle of beer and a blank expression. At noon he'd gone to work and puttered amongst case-files and watched the squares of sunlight through the window-blinds crawl across the floor. Four in the afternoon finds him in a grocery line with four Hungry Man dinners, a six-pack of beer, and a fat, white votive candle in his cart. He doesn't fucking know why he put the candle in there but he doesn't put it back. Seems like too much effort.

Five in the evening, he's in Staples looking at laptops and wanders the aisles. The drafts as people pass him buffet him in separate directions. When he comes back to himself he's standing in the Notebooks aisle thinking this wasn't what he was looking for, and the black leather books on the wire racks look wrong somehow. Marty puts down his empty red shopping basket and pulls a notebook free.  
He turns it in his hands as though it were made of molten glass. He pulls the black elastic fastener free with a snap and lets it fall open.  
The pages are blank.

The pages are blank as he tilts the book and flips them. Lines rush by, stark and present. But there's nothing there.

Why did he think there'd be something there?

He puts the notebook back and doesn't buy anything. In his car it's decades before he turns the key, and his eyes cut to the seat next to him.

It's been eight years, and why are you still looking for what's not there?

_You believe in ghosts?_

Marty does then. His life is filled with them.

Nine in the evening, after he's sent most of his dinner into the trash and had four beers, Marty lights the candle. He sets it on a ceramic coaster that'd come free in a case of Lone Star. He stares at it, drinks, and drifts. The book beside him is brand-new, though he's had it four years.

He opens Twilight of the Idols, by Frederich Nietzsche and flips through til he finds a newspaper clipping. He unfolds it. It's them, at their desks at the C.I.D. After Reggie and Dewall. Marty's looking at the camera almost, and drinking his coffee. Rust has his chin propped up in his hand and a ballpoint pen in his mouth. He'd done that when Quesada had given him shit for smoking so much, and " _Since it's for the paper, could you butt out for once?_  " Rust had drawled he was just trying to smoke out all the assholes, and Marty had answered, _"So if you're the last one out the building shut off the lights."_

Rust had given him the finger and Marty had returned it. Then after five minutes, the newspaper photographer snapped the photo.

Rust is looking right at him, and Marty's looking elsewhere.

Marty folds the clipping and puts it carefully inside the book. He finishes his beer and opens his laptop, waiting forever for it to load.

He types two words into Google and then hits I'm Feeling Lucky.

Nothing.

Rustin Cohle doesn't exist. At least not where Google can find him.

Marty shuts down his laptop and lets himself cry.

He cries for Dora Lange, for Rianne Olivier, for Kelly Rita, for the nameless boy Rust carried out of Ledoux's.

He cries for himself, for Rust, and for Rust's little girl.

He cries for the ghosts of his life even though they'll never leave.

 

Marty opens his eyes in his hospital room and there's Maggie staring at him.

"Sorry if I freaked you out there, " he offers.

She'll never get used to the easy way the word falls from his lips now.

"It's okay, " Maggie says, "It's normal."

His brows furrow and he side-eyes her and it makes him look seventeen years younger.

"What I meant, Marty, is that it's normal for people to say what they're feeling...without really filtering it. Trauma does that."

Trauma. That's a good word that he's heard a lot. It makes him think of plaster casts and butterfly bandages, but it makes him feel like he's been bombed down to his foundations and there's nothing standing anymore.

"I saw Rust."

Marty bites his lip, and his words come out steady, "How is he?"

Maggie's mouth quirks, "He's asleep."

"Looks bad, don't he?"

"He looks like he needs rest. He never slept much, did he?"

"Nope. Not that I ever saw."

That was a white lie he didn't mind telling - a tiny one made of gossamer that he'd admire in the light.

Rust slept, this was obvious, but it was mostly in a moving car with Marty driving. Marty figured it was the only thing approaching peace the man ever got. If he dreamed, Marty never noticed. He never made a sound, never twitched. But he'd come out of it when the car stopped moving.

And Marty would never let on that he'd been taking the long roads and driving in circles.

And Rust never asked.


	9. Light

  
Rust watches his words sink in as Maggie stands near him. He doesn't know what he can say that will give her what she wants so he'll be left alone. He's not dead. You can't grieve for living people. That's not how it fucking works. The living get sorrow and pity and sympathy. The dead get grief. But the dead don't care about grief. There's nothing to care about. That's why it's death.

Somewhere to the left of his mind, Rust thinks to remind Maggie she's worked in medicine. She knows the difference between alive and dead. She never knew how to navigate someone who walked the border of both.

But she's looking at him now and it's new knowledge for her, perhaps. There's an eye-click of recognition there, and she nods.

He watches her go, watches her pull the door gently until it nearly shuts.

Rust turns back to the window, and everything beyond it.

  
Rust floats in a territory of bone-weary exhaustion, medication, and mental fatigue. He rises in and out of sleep like a bucket down a well. When his eyes open, his room is a little brighter all the time. He marks the changes in the skyline from dark to light. Shapes and definitions that sharpen and solidify. Everything in the dark is all one thing. Adding light gives perspectives, and form out of the void.  
  
From the stretch of dark, his eyes pick out lamp posts. Cars. Parking meridians full of bark mulch and shrubs. People.

He watches the dark get lighter, a velvet drape pulled up and off like a magician's trick. Lifted like a veil.

Violet to indigo to hazy blue, the colours wash over him. His pains stifle their cries when the sun stretches fingers through the trees, leaving burst glare prints streaming through dirty glass.

The dark is a comforting blanket, and Rust knows he'll track the daylight as it recedes into night. For now, he has no solid thought. He'll watch the sunbeams until the day staff interrupts him and makes him do things for his body that he thinks less and less of. The food is tasteless, and beyond anything nutritious. Certainly nothing that will make a stab wound knit itself.

If it would get him out of the bed faster, Rust think to suggest Crazy Glue over his stitches. It worked for soldiers in Korea, it'll work for him. It's all the same meat.

Rust picks out a patch of sunshine for himself and watches it move. Thinks about clocks and the hubris of mechanical hands marking time where early man had looked up and gauged time in a way that suited him. When it is light, it is time to live, and act, and hunt, and breathe, and fight. When it is dark, all action ceases.

And he corrects himself. Nothing ceases. When it is dark, there is still feeling. Rust tracks his sunbeam and thinks of the quiet dark, and the warmth he felt. Warmth, and love and not alone. Then the deeper dark, and the fading, the expanding outward surrounded by love.

The brush of his cheek against his pillow roars into his ear, and he notes that the meat is still growing whiskers.

His sunbeam grows faster. It touches the foot of his bed, and he feels his bare toes under the flannel wiggle with sensation.

His body still hates the cold. His mind stopped associating _cold_ with _dark_ after he killed Errol Childress. Because after that, the dark was warm.

Rust scratches at his nose, marks how nothing in this room makes him react. A sensory dead-zone.

There's light all across the end of his bed now, and he moves his feet at the ankles.

The first dark was interesting, because he'd felt himself slipping into warmth and substance yet he felt anchored. And there had been light, enough that his eyes opened to see.

Warmth climbs up his body under the blankets, tiny flashpoints, like candle flame chakras.

It's not a dopey warmth either. No druggy sluggishness. This is different.

There had been light, and warmth and love down in a place that gnashed endless rows of teeth and devoured such things. There had been form in the void.

Rust can't see the floor where his sunbeam went, but he clocks the source from his left -- a curve of pure heat and energy through his window, like a caress.

He wants to lean into it like before. Feel the sun's warm palms at his cheek, his eyelids, his lips.

He sighs. If he went right here, right now, it'd be nearly perfect. He's warm, and safe, and he knows where he's going.

A rubbery squeak from the doorway has his brain filling in _nurse's shoes. Drugs. She'll pull the blinds. Meat circus. Here we go._

"Rust..."

He turns to the sound with his eyes closed -- from the light flooding them through his lids - and when he opens them, he finds still more light.

The one he remembers from down in the dark.

Rust blinks slowly and Marty's glowing in his printed hospital gown, seated in a wheelchair. Some small secret in the tilt of his mouth, in the lines near his eyes.

And there's no rush to fill the space with words, but one slips out.

"Marty."

Marty's smile widens, his eyes crinkle shut as he looks down to the floor. He laughs. And it's small, and relieved, and there's a _heh heh hoooo_ and an exhaled breath that brushes against Rust like a feather.

"How're you feeling?" Marty asks.

Rust quirks his lips, wiggles the fingers on his right hand, and finds his errant sunbeam has covered Marty completely.

"Still a part of the body."

And Marty puts his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, like a kid listening to a tall tale, and laughs as the room brims with light.


	10. Seen and Heard

There's little said in words between them. Words can lie.

And there's nothing to be said at the moment.

Marty watches Rust watch him. That used to creep him out when they'd first met. Rust would pointedly avoid eye contact in favour of the car window. Not that Marty was any better. Any glance toward Rust was slathered with irritation. Either Rust's silence or his long-windedness bothered him.

In the last decade, Marty Hart grew tired of silence. He's a self-professed 'people person' - whether this was a boon or a detriment depended on who Marty was around. He struck up with the good old boys at the station, or the bars and ignored his partner, and paid more attention to women who weren't his wife or his daughters.

Marty hasn't adapted to solitary life. Unlike Rust, Marty can't handle being alone. His tolerance for it is nil.

Marty glances at Rust and his eyes settle. For the seven years of their partnership, Marty can't recall a time where he really looked at Rust.

After their fight in the C.I.D lot, Marty swore to himself that if he didn't see Rust Cohle for the rest of his life, he'd consider himself blessed. Before their falling out, Marty bemoaned the presence of Rust in his life -- it wasn't easy hearing his shit all the time, the guy never sounded human, Rust's opinion of himself was too goddamn high (who the fuck does he think he is?).

After their falling out, Marty reveled for a day in front of some of his co-workers who patted his shoulders and told him he'd put up a hell of a fight, and _fuck that ratfuck, man, seriously, he had that shit coming for years. You let him go easy. Tax Man's mouth wrote a check his ass couldn't cash._

The day after was different. Kathleen brought him his coffee as usual, but her eyes were sad when she looked at the empty chair across from Marty.

Prince Charming, Marty Hart, thanked her for his coffee and then directed her attention to the condition of his face. " _Why be sad that Cohle's gone? You see what he did to me?"_

Kathleen didn't say anything at first. She squeezed and patted his shoulder while he sipped his coffee. Then she stepped back and looked at his desk. And then at Cohle's vacant one.  
  
_"I saw what y'all did to each other. Seven years is a long time."_

Marty put his cup down, _"The hell does that mean?"_

Kathleen leaned her hip on his desk and lowered her voice, _"Seven years is a long time to work with someone you don't like."_

 _"Well, I never said I --- shit, look, okay, people change. Y'know, it's not always for the better. It's personal, and it wasn't gonna go any further or get any better. It'd run its course. Fair to say our partnership limped along til it couldn't go no more._ "

Kathleen straighted. She smoothed out her clothes as Marty finished his coffee. When he handed her the cup, she said, _"You're sounding better, Marty. I almost believed you meant that."_

Marty watched her go back to her desk and sit down. There'd been no derision in her voice, just a solemn resignation.

He refused to feel guilty. Cohle brought all his miseries onto himself. Was the man's own damn fault. And wherever the fuck he'd landed, Marty didn't care. He'd given more than enough of his time and energy to something that wasn't a benefit.

 

  
"Marty?"

Marty glances up, sees Rust looking at him. The purple-black around his eyes is fading. Rust's eyes are the only part of him that show he's alive. There was a moment or two while Rust slept that Marty wondered if he was breathing.

"Yeah?"

"How're you doing?"

"Oh, me? Fine, fine. Uh, Gilbough and Papania came by. Started filling me in on what we found. They found plenty of evidence to link to Dora Lange. And the Lake Charles one too."

"Stephanie Kurdish."

Marty glances over at Rust, "Yeah, that's her."

"What else?"

"Well, Papania said they're gonna want to talk to you when you're able, y'know, because you..."

Rust waits for him to continue, eyes bright in his face.

Marty clears his throat, " 'Cause you shot Childress. And they just want to clear stuff up."

"To be fair, Marty, you shot him too." Rust's words are tinder-dry.

Marty's lips twist, "I'm now of the opinion that if you can't hit a target with the first shot, you shouldn't have a gun. Or at least more fucking practice."

"Not much opportunity to shoot people in the P.I business. And that's good."

Rust pauses.

"You still hit him, Marty."

"And he fuckin' hit back, " Marty says, nodding. His fingers rub at his shoulder bandage. Marty stops when he thinks of Rust's much more serious wound.

"So, I should expect those two to come calling. We got a story to start, or somethin'?"

Marty shakes his head, "They said they owe us on this."

Rust settles back on his pillows, " A man remembers his debts."

"They're still gonna talk to you though."

"Mmmm. Well, I ain't goin' anywhere at present."

Marty shifts in his wheelchair. His back is throbbing.

"You know when you're gettin' out?"

"Hard to say, really, " Rust says. His voice sounds far away.

"Oh, well yeah. That makes sense. Listen, I'm gonna go and let you get some rest. I'll be back later."

Rust murmurs, "Mmmhmm" with his eyes closed.

Marty wheels to the door, pushing with his feet. He turns back and Rust is looking at him.

"Rust?"

"Yeah, Marty?"

"It's good to see you, man."

"Good to see you too, Marty."


	11. Passage

 

  
  After Marty goes back to his room, Rust flows back into himself like water in a fountain. He's pleased Marty's okay, and he tries to call up more memories of Marty being okay because it's a welcome distraction from himself.

He'd watch the sun appear in Alaska, coming out of the water as a shining disc. Rust paused whenever the sun rose. Whether he was on a crab boat hauling trap-lines, or locking up a bar in Juneau, he'd stop and take a minute while the sun came up. He remembers doing it more recently - as recent as two years ago - watching the sun come up behind Doumain's bar, while he sat in a well-traveled lawn chair drinking beer and turning pages.

He marked time through phases of light and dark.

He thinks of his other lifetime in Louisiana and how he thought of it.

Rust names it the long, bright dark.

At present, things are grey. He's still in this bed, and not likely to be walking steady any time soon.

Marty will be out soon enough, and there's a bud of warmth in his chest at that thought.

Rust had seen Maggie, so he'd known she'd been to visit Marty. Rust hoped she brought the girls.

He's glad she cares for Marty. The true pain, he knows, is that she always cared for Marty even when Marty didn't care for her.

What passed between her and Rust was born from their connection to Marty. Marty neglected both his marriage partner and his work partner -- the two spheres of his life he lived in, and those spheres couldn't orbit long without colliding.

Rust doesn't forgive himself that night in oh-two. And he doesn't forgive Maggie either. And especially not Marty, who for all his angry feelings decided he was the least to blame for burning his work and marriage to ashes.

Rust doesn't forgive, but knows there's no point in bringing up the past if he can't use it to affect his present, or his future.

His real dilemma is his static present and lack of future. There's no shortage of past though. It stretches behind him, glossy black with small novas of light.

At present, he has Marty. He'd gambled on how much he knew of Marty, before chasing him down on that road and asking for his help. He'd gambled on how much Marty might have changed.

Rust recalls the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius spoke of simplicity as a precursor of pragmatism. Take a thing and ask what is it of itself.

Rust pared down his perception of Marty Hart like a sculptor at a marble block. He smiles and thinks Marty would give him shit at this comparison, snidely wondering _you saying I'm a blockhead and too thick for your high-horse ramblings?_

Rust had expected Marty to punch him, or make a grab at his neck through his car window. But he'd read Marty as Marty walked through the C.I.D lot -- both in oh-two, and now -- and the Marty he watched from his truck was different. Oh, he still walked like he'd beat the world like it owed him money if the mood was on him. Throwing glares at the twin glass doors as he descended the stairs.  
Rust watched Marty get in his car, and deflate. Like the world threw extra plates on the bench-press when Marty rested, and it was harder to lift all the weight all the time.

Rust observes that Marty is still Marty, in essence. And that the essence of Marty, stripped of his good old boy bravado, ego, and long-suffering, useless machismo, is that Marty is a good man. If Rust hadn't heard Marty question if he was a bad man, all those years ago, he'd still have doubts.

It's been Rust Cohle's experience that the man who questions his nature has potential to change -- whereas a man with obstinate assurance will stagnate.

Marty had followed him. There'd been a feeling-out of sorts, a testing of footing. New steps in familiar territory. Rust mused on their tandem drive to Doumain's that one can never travel the same road twice. There are always changes. He'd clocked Marty in his rearview mirror, and only then did he think about his tail-light.

Marty was as Rust remembered him, Father Time's changes be what they are. But there's less posturing. Marty speaks his goddamn mind without padding it with his bullshit.

Marty also looks him full in the face. And he'd rarely done that without adding a middle finger or an epithet.

Marty talks to him.

They have actual _conversations_.

_About themselves._

It reminded Rust of Maggie giving him a glass of tea and listening. Offering a perspective different from his own, but not over-riding him.

Then it was Marty, and a bottle of beer, and a couple sets of baggage, but they got through it.

He'd seen it in Marty's face -- that ghost of self-assurance. _"I'm not interested in whatever it is you think you owe me."_

And how his face changed as Rust answered, _"Oh **I don't owe you**. We left something undone. We gotta fix it."_

Because this wasn't about Marty, or even Rust. It was about them together and what they left unfinished.

_It was our case, and we didn't get it done._

Marty's small, obvious lie of how he doesn't dwell in the past.

When you hate your present, and you can't see your future, the past looks brighter every day.

Rust's fervent, assured _"Because you have a debt ",_ sunk into Marty like the hammer-claw Carcosa would acquaint him with.  
  
Rust hears it in Marty's exhale, and the pull of his shoulders.

But Marty agrees to go with him, and Marty listens to him.

Granted, Marty pulls his gun but Rust saw it coming.

In response, Rust lit a smoke and handed Marty a beer. Commented on Marty's choice of hollow-point bullets, and they got to work.

Old scenes, with new details.

Rust mulls over that while he drifts to sleep.


	12. Tightrope

 

Marty wheels in to see Rust the following afternoon and notes something is wrong.  
  
The feeling tugs at his brain. He has the sensation of something tapping at him like someone taps a shoulder to gain attention.

Rust is asleep, but Marty can't shake the disquieting tension coiling in his gut.

_"Just something I gotta see to, before gettin' on with something else."_

He doesn't want to think of Rust dying. Of Rust hurting himself further.

Years ago, he'd lived comfortably in his ignorance. Other people's problems were just that. Except when Marty had a problem - then everyone was obligated to help him. He'd shrugged off the notion that he ignored his girls. He spent time with Maggie as long as his needs were met, and Rust was merely backup to Marty Hart, senior detective.

Marty sips his ice water through a bendy straw and marvels at how he'd pinballed through his life, bouncing off people and events without a care. Until the fun ride ended and there were no more second chances. Everything bottomed right out and he got his steady life, like he'd always hoped.

How ironic it was then, that a steady life equated to a collapsed marriage, a draining career, and a hobby he touted as a business. Beyond that he's a middle-aged drinker who knows the rotation of all the late-night T.V informercials, and his only priority is himself.

Once he couldn't pad his life with distractions to avoid the truth of himself, the truth was all he had. That he'd done wrong and it was too late to fix any of it. Too late to assume blame in the quest for something better. His reward was the knowledge that by never knowing what he wanted, and never committing to anything beyond the gratification he'd receive, he'd effectively demolished his future. That there was no catching up, or starting over. Because his future is behind him.

Marty's straw reaches the ice piled in his pink, plastic hospital jug and he hears the empty, suctioning sound.

There's a poetry to it. How much it sounds like his life.

He pops the lid off his jug and pushes his straw around in the ice. He glances at Rust, asleep in the bed, and how worn, and brittle he looks.

Marty told him as much at the bar.

_"You don't look particularly healthy. Listening to you talk. Your eyes. You seem...kinda brittle, Rust."_

Marty saw every moment with Rust with fresh eyes. Heard with sharp ears. Papania and Gilbough couldn't railroad him about Rust, and Rust, far as he ever knew, never trucked with any bullshit.

But all the questions Rust asked him got Marty thinking. Running a parallel to their case, Marty figured Rust was fixing up to some sort of exit.

Why choose Alaska when he hates the cold? Why the bars when he'd admitted to problems with booze?

Marty fires up his old pal Google on one of those many late nights Papania alluded to, while Rust sprawls out on the office carpet with a cigarette between his lips, a drink resting on his stomach, and a faraway look on his face.

Marty types **Alaskan fishing boat** into the **Search** field and goes cold all over when Google fills in **"sinks"** as an option.

He chews his tongue. Downs some whiskey. Then he clicks it.

_Skipper dies after fishing boat sinks._

_Four crewmen lost after boat goes down._

_Fishing deaths mount - government slow to cast safety net._

There's a Facebook page called _R.I.P Alaska Fishermen._

Even that T.V show about boats in Alaska suffers casualties.

Marty closes Google and pours two fingers of Jameson's.

_Lacks constitution for suicide, my ass._

He surveys Rust, from ragged ponytail to ragged boots. The glass on his stomach rises and falls, and the tip of his cigarette flares with every inhale.

Marty grits his teeth and tips back his whiskey.  
  
If there's a Stage Left exit primed after they close this case out, he'll be goddamned if he stands idle watching Rust do his tightrope walk without a net.

Marty decides to be his net. Marty commits himself in that moment. 

 

  
A nurse refills his water, and she's gone maybe a full minute before Rust jolts awake from the noise of Marty's drinking straw.

Rust sees him. His voice is hoarse, weighted down by drugs and exhaustion.

"What're you doin' here?"

_Good morning to you too._

"Nothin'. Nurse said I could come in."

"Were you watchin' me sleep?"

_Man freakin' says it like it's somethin' filthy._

"Well, you know I just got here. I was gonna leave, but then you woke up.  
Jesus, what's your fuckin' problem?"

"Nothin'. What's your problem?"

"Not a care in the world."

Marty sips his water while Rust gathers his thoughts.

"I saw him, Marty. He was mowin' that school yard in Pelican Island, in ninety-five.  
Couldn't tell how tall he was 'cause he was sittin' and his face was dirty, but I...I saw him."

Marty tilts his head and says, "That's what's buggin' you?"

Rust's words come breathless, "The Tuttles. The men in the video. We didn't get 'em all."

"Yeah, and we ain't gonna get 'em all. That ain't what kinda world it is. But we got ours."

Rust turns inward after a few moments. Marty senses the shift in tension.

"I'm not supposed to be here," Rust says.

Marty smiles a little, breathes a laugh equal parts sad and knowing, "Yeah, well I'll come back by tomorrow, buddy."

Dry as the Mojave, Rust answers, "Why?"

Marty winces as he lifts his right arm to flip Rust his middle finger, "Don't ever change, man."

Rust returns the gesture and keeps his eyes on Marty til he's out of sight.

As he wheels down the hall, Marty smiles to himself. Rust's response gives him hope, and that's something new.

Something they can build on.


	13. Scent

  
  
Rust ignores the clock in his room. He tracks his days like game in the brush.

He searches for what stands out. What changes. His doctor cuts down his painkillers per Rust's request. Rust argues he can't tell what fucking day it is anymore.

Soon all that's put in his arm is glucose. He's losing mass at an alarming rate, and he's told that won't speed his healing.

When Marty visits, he feels solid. Rust doesn't drift when Marty's in the room.

They don't talk much but the air is loud with unspoken thoughts.

One evening Marty visits him without his wheelchair. Marty's dressed in jogging pants, new sneakers, and a blue t-shirt.

"Gettin' out?" Rust asks.

"Yeah, I am. Got my car back from state Forensics. All it's missing is that new car smell." Marty says.

Marty looks Rust over, "You're seemin' better."

Rust nods, squeezes the armrests of the chair he sits in. It's white, padded with puffy vinyl. It doesn't have wheels, and it's not a hospital bed.

"Can get in and out of bed now. Just real slow. And they're tellin' me not to move so much, but I've been in that bed so goddamn long it feels...feels like if I'm not movin..."

"That you're standin' still."

Their eyes meet, and they nod.

"Yeah," Rust says, and it hangs in the air like smoke.

Marty shoves his hands in his pockets and points his chin at Rust's covered dinner tray, "You need to eat."

"I'm not hungry, Marty."

"You still gotta. I mean, shit, look at ---"

Rust's reply is no less sharp than it is soft, "I know what I look like, Marty."

Marty crouches by his chair, "They're not gonna let you go, you don't start really gettin' better. And I know the food here is total shit, but you need to eat. Christ, eat the Jello. Heard it's got beef marrow or whatever in it. If it sounds gross, it's gotta be healthy."

"They're not gonna let me out, " Rust says.

Marty puts a hand over Rust's bandaged arm, "Why not?"

"I'm just afraid I'm not gettin' out. Like, if I can just tell them what they want to hear, it'll be fine."

"Well, what do they wanna hear?"

"That I'm gettin' better. But I'm not. And they're talkin' about counselors and shit, and I still gotta give Papania and Gilbough a statement. 'Cause you know they've been by, and been chased off by the staff...and I don't know, Marty."

"Don't know what?"

"That if I tell them what really happened, that they'll let me go. Because I'll tell you this -- _you know how fuckin' crazy it sounds_. You know how _I_ sound."

Marty folds his other hand over Rust's fingers, "You think they're gonna keep you here."

Rust bites his lip and nods his head slow, "And I'm afraid that I'm not gonna be able to keep my shit straight, and I'm just gonna start talkin' and that'll be it."

Marty squeezes his hand, and Rust looks down.

"Ain't gonna go like that. You're too fuckin' smart. Ran laps around Papania, from how he tells it. Think you pissed him off."

They're silent for a minute. Rust puts his other hand over Marty's and feels phantom matchsticks striking red sulphur trails down his spine, to his toes.

Marty stands up with a grunt, and wiggles his fingers til Rust lifts his away.

The air presses down around them, and Rust smells hot blacktop, ozone and some scent his brain labeled _Marty_ that wakes thoughts of long car rides and silent reflection.

"I'm gonna go, " Marty says, "but I'll be back tomorrow. And in the meantime, fuckin' eat something. Even if it's the paint off the walls."

"Think they'd lock me up for sure, Marty, " Rust says, tasting scents in the air of something alive and willing.

Maybe, Rust thinks as he watches Marty leave, he's not as dead as he'd like to be, and there's a good reason for it.


	14. Steady

The first thing Marty does upon leaving Lafayette General is breathe deep. He hasn't done that in two weeks without gritting his teeth in agony. Now it's all he wants to do.

Maggie drives his Cadillac over from the police lot. Ted and his shiny white sport-utility-i-make-so-much-money car follows her.

"Ted gonna say hi?" Marty says, like he could care either way.

Maggie hands Marty his keys and her mouth curves at his tone, "Are you sure you're all right to drive?"

Marty's driven wasted countless times in the past, can't fathom why he's never been pulled over or killed.

"Yeah, I'm fine to drive. Just a little sore. I'll be okay. Thanks again, you know, for helpin' me out."

Maggie touches Marty's arm, and it's a small echo of reassurance from long ago.

"How's Rust?"

"Up and around a bit. Gettin' better, but slow goin' obviously. He's still up, I think. Was when I left. You gonna go see him?"

Maggie shakes her head, "No, that's fine. Maybe...maybe later. When he's out. Speaking of that, do you know if he...has anyone...to help him? These next weeks are crucial, following surgery like that. Anything can happen."

Marty jingles his keys, "I've got it covered. He's got me. But on the subject of cleanin' and bandagin', if there's a list of stuff I should know, could you help me?"

***

Maggie calls him while he's at The French Press, picking up his food. In the hospital, he'd daydreamed about po'boy sandwiches in between nightmares of twisting branches and death. Marty balances take-out containers, his phone, his wallet, and his patience with an ease he didn't possess in his other life. He reassures Maggie about his decision concerning Rust. She's skeptical, and he doesn't correct her. When she starts a sentence with, "In the past, Marty..." then he interrupts with a calm, firm voice that it's not the past anymore. Marty hears her lay out all the potential mistakes he could make if he's not careful. He doesn't correct her.

When Marty finishes writing the Cliff Notes version of her list on top of his sandwich container, she asks him again if he's sure about what he's doing. The underlying meanings are clear.

_Do you know what you're doing?_

_Because in the past, Marty, you never.._.

_In the past, you hurt everyone._

"Marty?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you really sure about this?"

And he doesn't believe he can ever tell her exactly why he needs to do what he's fixing to do. There would never be a precise explanation that she would believe. He's done talking about things. He's just going to do them.

Rust would understand.

***

Marty keeps his word. He's back to see Rust for lunch, with red beans and rice. Something home-cooked that will fill the gaunt hollows in the man's face. Rust isn't in his bed. He's sitting up by the windows, and his hair is damp. Marty sits across from him, and smiles. He smells hospital shampoo and aloe, and puts the Styrofoam container in front of Rust.

"What's this?"

"Because you need to eat."

"I ate the Jello, " Rust offers by way of explanation.

Marty half-rolls his eyes, "Yeah, and I can see it's done wonders. Now eat."

Rust glances at the container, and then at Marty while his slim, shaking fingers pull at the tabs.

"You cold?"

Rust shakes his head, but Marty catches him shivering.

***

Marty wrangles a blanket from the blanket-warmer across the hall.

"What're you doin'?"

He folds the blanket around Rust, and gives him a _don't fuss with me_ sort of look.

"You're sittin' here with damp hair, and I ain't gonna listen to your teeth chatter while you eat."

Marty opens his sandwich container and unwraps a fork, handing it over to Rust.

Rust stares at his food, and Marty sees the lines in his forehead deepen.

"Here, almost forgot, " Marty says, and puts a bottle of Tabasco down.

Marty digs into his sandwich, watching tiny lines at the corners of Rust's mouth appear.

***

Marty's back every day for shy of three weeks. He brings Rust breakfast -- eggs, real bacon, grits with real butter. Oatmeal with fruit. Waffles. He's got the hospital's food service routine cased. The nurses start making bets to what he brings, and several patients try to buy the food off him. Marty's early for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The first week, Rust grouses to him that he _doesn't need no special treatment, Marty. Hospital food ain't that bad._

Marty fires back that _anything on those trays should have been outlawed per the fucking Geneva Convention. Ain't gonna get any better eatin' garbage._

Rust asks him why he's doing all this.

Marty replies that it's because he wants to.

And then it's settled, and Rust doesn't bring it up again.

 

***

Marty brings Rust lunches. He hits up every delicatessen and take-out diner in the greater Lafayette area.

Broccoli and cheddar soup, Santa Fe chicken sandwiches, fajitas, a cheesesteak sandwich. Pepper steak. Marty finds something called a Peachtree Melt -- and Rust inhales it.

Marty asks Rust what he'd like next. Rust tells him.

Marty nearly gets into a wrestling match near the nurses' station over a box of fried chicken. The staff argues that it's not healthy to feed someone fried chicken, and Marty counters that it's not healthy for people to live on Jello, following up with, "Did you pack a lunch or do you eat from here?"

The chorus of silence has Marty carrying his contraband chicken like a goddamn trophy.

Rust remarks on the grin Marty has walking in, "You bring your gun this time?"

"Nope. I used my words."

"Look at you, Mr. Congeniality. This count as some sort of social progress?"

"I guess so. Here's your chicken."

Marty puts his feet up and watches Rust eat, more than a little pleased with himself.

***

The jambalaya for dinner was a breaking point. The stretch of hallway by Week Three has become a gauntlet. Hospitals frown on anything deemed "unhealthy", so the minute the smell of cornbread and shrimp hit the air, Marty knows he's a marked man. A guy Marty dubbed Hop-A-Long appears right on time and Marty is all smiles when Hoppy stops him.

"I'll give you fifty bucks for whatever's in that bag."

Marty puts on his best back-slapping, good old boy face as he nudges one rubber-tipped crutch with his foot, "You don't back up, I'm gonna make sure you're in here eating that slop for a year. See how far you get with that. How lucky do you feel right now on those crutches?"

Hop-a-Long goes on his way, and Marty hears, "Fuckin' psycho..." under the guy's breath as he passes.

Rust greets him with, "Heard you in the hallway. Used your words again."

"And I didn't need to shout neither."

***

It's Friday evening, and Marty's brought Rust _pho ga_ \- Vietnamese chicken noodle soup. Rust's face is a study of imperceptible bliss. Marty's learned to read him now. The small movements, the changes in his breathing. Marty doesn't outright stare at him - Rust'd catch him. But Marty watches him with minute glances, like Braille and fingertips but with his eyes.

Back then, before Guy Francis and after Ledoux, they'd caught and solved with precision. After they'd closed a case, any small victory was worth a reward. They'd go out and eat. Marty's a meat-and-potatoes sort of man, while Rust never turned his nose up at anything spicy or in Marty's estimation, weird.

Though Marty admits Rust's choice of venue was a keeper. After Marty tried _bahn mi_ , he'd rarely wanted anything else for a sandwich.

"Don't look like any chicken soup I ever saw, " Marty'd said, while Rust stirred chili oil, basil leaves and bean sprouts into his broth.

"It's good, " Rust said, with that calm finality that had irritated Marty then, but not now.

Marty watched Rust eat. The man had no wasted motion. Marty understood the necessity of eating, but if food wasn't good, if it didn't give him a warm, full satisfaction, then that was sort of depressing.

But that chicken soup was Tax Man Kryptonite. It made Rust human. He didn't have his walls up so damn high, and Marty even caught him smiling a little.

***

In addition to the soup, Marty brings him pork salad rolls with shrimp, extra peanut sauce, deep fried wonton with sweet plum sauce, and a small jug of sweet tea.

Rust eats everything in front of him, right down to the peanut sauce like it was pudding, while Marty eats his _bahn mi_ sandwich down to every last crumb and leans back with a sigh.

  
"In between you gettin' me food, what've you been up to, Marty? Workin'?"

Rust pushes his empty bowl aside and meets his eyes.

"Oh, nothin' much. Got a bit more business to take care of, plus I'm gettin' phone calls from our mutual friends about how you're doin'."

Rust nods and says, " Of course."

"Well, I said not to bother you til you're out. Said putting you under extra stress was bullshit. Gilbough agreed."

"And Papania?"

"Didn't."

"Figures."

Rust's eyes close and he breathes long and deep.

"So, how are you doin'? You know, in general?"

Rust opens his eyes, "Still around. Physically, you know, the body's gonna keep on going."

"And everything else?"

Rust shrugs, and Marty hurts at the way his collarbone hollows out when he does it.

Marty stands up, "I'll be right back."

"I'll be here, " Rust says.

Marty comes back in five minutes with a wheelchair, "Feel up to some fresh air?"

Rust looks at him and says, "More than you know."


	15. Transcend

Fresh air was never so sweet, nor so pure.

Outside, Rust feels fuller, the hollows in him growing smaller.

Marty pushes the wheelchair, a comforting, companionable silence. Rust muses for a second when that change had happened, and decides the when of it doesn't matter. Everything is now, and everything is different.

They stop and breathe, and there's nothing to be said, only felt.

Marty says after a few moments, "Doc said you'd probably get out in a few days. I'll make sure you got a ride and a place to stay."

"I'll figure it out, " Rust says, flipping between his thoughts and the Now as though they're pages in a book.

"Well, it's already been figured out, " Marty continues. Marty stands to Rust's right side, and doesn't look at him, though he holds out a bow-wrapped blue box in one hand. "Oh, hey. Brought you somethin."

Rust turns the box over and over again and looks at Marty, "Are we gettin' engaged?"

"If we were gettin' engaged, I'd have got a nicer ribbon."

Rust pulls off the ribbon and takes off the lid.

He pulls out the pack of Camel Blues and closes his fingers around it, "You remembered."

And Marty's laugh sounded new, like something he'd heard but never listened to.

"Let's get out from under this roof, huh?" Rust says.

"Good idea."

Rust puts his hands on the wheels to push himself, when Marty propels the chair forward, "Hey, I can push two goddamn wheels on my own."

" Yeah and I oughta let you, " Marty says, "and rip out your fuckin' stitches, stop it."

And Rust does. No argument needed.

***

With all the night sky above him, Rust relaxes. He feels airy, and weightless, and glad for Marty's presence. There's life and energy and sounds of the night, and he lets himself feel it, for the first time in what felt like two lifetimes, Rust feels possibility.

"Feelin' better?" Marty asks, sounding like he hated to interrupt the peace of the moment. "In your head, I mean?"

"Ah, I shouldn't even fuckin' be here, Marty."

"I believe 'no shit' is the proper response to that observation."

"Nah, I don't mean like that. It's somethin' different."

"Well...what...so, talk to me, Rust."

And Rust does. He draws a shaky breath, and he does.

***  
"There was a moment, I know, when I was under in the dark, that something… whatever I’d been reduced to, not even consciousness, just a vague awareness in the dark. I could feel my definitions fading. And beneath that darkness there was another kind—it was deeper—warm, like a substance. I could feel, man, I knew, I _knew_ my daughter waited for me, there. So clear. I could feel her. I could _feel_ … I could feel the peace of my Pop, too. It was like I was part of everything that I have ever loved, and we were all, the three of us, just fading out. And all I had to do was let go, man. And I did. I said, ‘Darkness, yeah.’ and I disappeared. But I could still feel her love there. Even more than before. Nothing. _Nothing but that love_. And then I woke up.”

Rust breaks down, sobbing, shaking.

Marty comforts him, small touches on his shoulder, and a soft voice, “Didn’t you tell me one time, dinner once, maybe, about how you used to ... you used to make up stories about the stars?”

“Yeah, that was in Alaska, under the night skies.”

“Yeah, you used to lay there and look up, at the stars?”

“Yeah, I think you remember how I never watched a TV until I was 17, so there wasn’t much to fuckin' do up there besides walk around, explore, and...”

“And look up at the stars and make up stories." Marty's face lights up, " Like what?”

“I tell you Marty I been up in that room looking out those windows every night here just thinking, it’s just one story. The oldest.”

“What’s that?”

"Light versus dark.”

Marty looks up at the night sky, and it's too big for everything that it holds, “Well, I know we ain’t in Alaska, but it appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory.”

Rust is calm now, “Yeah, you’re right about that.”

Marty stands up and flips the handbrake on the chair, and Rust pulls at his arm, "Hey...listen. Hey..."

Marty doesn't hesitate, "Yeah, what?"

Rust struggles to stand up, "Why don't you point me in the direction of the car, man. I spent enough of my fuckin' life in hospitals."

Marty's around to catch him, and puts Rust's arm around his shoulders to steady him, "Jesus. You know what, I'd protest, but it occurs to me that you're unkillable. You wanna go back and get your clothes, or anything?"

"Anything I left back there, I don't need."

And the truth of that has never been clearer to him. Nothing before has ever been clearer, more easily understood than Now.

“You’re looking at it wrong, the sky thing, " Rust says,

Marty says, “How’s that?”

“Well, once there was only dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.”

Marty laughs, and holds tight to him. Rust clutches his pack of smokes and thinks they could probably walk forever if they had to.

***

Rust lets Marty buckle him in. He runs his fingers over the corners of the gift box as he stares out the window less and less, looking at Marty more and more.

They drive in silence for a couple blocks before Marty huffs out a breath.

"Shit."

"What?"

"They're gonna break down my fuckin' door and haul your ass back when they see you're gone."

"Who's that now?"

"I think Papania'd be first through the door. Guy always struck me like a cowboy."

Rust turns the blue box in his hands and says, "You gonna let 'em?"

Marty waits for the light to change from red to green before he answers.

"They're welcome to try."

Rust glances over, and Marty's already looking at him.

"Can't improve my shitty aim if I don't practice."


	16. Echoes

 

  
Marty parks in a driveway Rust doesn't recognize.

"Where's this?" Rust asks.

Marty shuts off the car, "Where I live."

Rust puts the blue gift box on the dashboard and surveys the house. It's modest, but fairly large, white with a blue trim. Two floors, and a brick facade on the east corner. The picture windows must flood the house with light at sunrise. But the large tree at the front has a leafy canopy he could live under, if the mood was on him.

"This what you were fillin' your time with, in between meal runs?" Rust says as Marty helps him out of the car. He hands the blue box with his cigarettes to Marty, who stuffs it in a pocket.

"Yeah, I went back to that apartment, and I just couldn't stay there another second. Kinda lucked out, finding this place. And it's not like I can't afford it, even with the business bein' what it is. Guess I never thought to get a bigger place...well, cause there wasn't anyone but me livin' in it. The girls said they'd come by and visit, and I thought, hell I'm gonna need more space."

Marty hauls Rust's arm around his shoulders and keeps pace with his slow steps. "Got two rooms upstairs, I figured those'd be guest rooms. Can make myself a corner office if I don't feel like headin' in to work."

"It's good to stay busy, " Rust says, as they get to the front door. Marty hits a button on his car keyfob and the Cadillac bleats. He shuffles his keys and opens the door.

"Shit, Rust, I fuckin' forgot, you're goddamn barefoot."

"Ain't nothin' cut or bleedin', Marty, relax. Made it across the parkin' lot. Can make it to the couch."

Marty closes the door behind them and locks it. Rust notes the deadbolt.  
  
"Can't be too careful, huh?"

Marty nods, "Pretty much. And you're dreamin' you're thinkin' I'm puttin' you on the couch."

***

"Main floor bedroom's close to the bathroom, plus no stairs to deal with. And I'll be down the hall, you need anything."

"Where're you sleepin'?"

"The couch."

Rust looks around what's obviously Marty's bedroom. Spacious, soft carpet, a dresser, a bed quilted in blue and grey tones. He feels like a burden.

"This is your room, Marty. I'll stay in your house but I ain't gonna push you outta your own damn bedroom."

It's hard to make a point like that while they're hanging on to one another, but Rust tries.

"When I said I'd help you, I meant it. You don't need to stay here permanently, man. Just til you don't fall over and rip something."

Rust tries again, "Marty..."

"Hey. Hey, man, ...will you let me help you?"

Rust doesn't exactly nod, but Marty gets his answer.

***

Marty starts with his feet. With warm water, soap,  and a washcloth. Rust's seated on the closed lid of the toilet while Marty sits on the edge of his bathtub, wiping dirt from Rust's soles with care and precision.

Rust can't recall the last time someone ever touched him like he mattered.  
  
When he removes Marty from the spaces in his life, he sees more gaps than anything else. Beyond Claire and Sophia, there's nothin' til his Pop. After that, there's only Marty. Lori, being a doctor, always touched him like he was a science project. Her and Maggie exclaiming over drinks the roots of his synaesthesia, like he didn't already know what it was.   
And Marty, quiet with his glass of bourbon, who never asked beyond what Rust told him about it. Colours and notes and textures.

Sure, Marty blurted out that it was "tasting colours" but it was more than that. Marty never treated it like it made Rust less. It just made Rust, Rust.

Marty cleans between his toes in a way that makes Rust think of baths he must have given his girls.

"That hurt at all?" Marty says.

Rust says no, and doesn't mention how it hurts in a different way.

Marty checks his bandages like he's studying a bomb. He's careful in a way that Rust never felt worthy of.

The insides of Rust's eyelids are painted with streaks of amber, gold, and tournaline. They shimmer like water down a windowpane.

"Marty?"

Marty's intent on removing the adhesive tape and leaving Rust some skin, so he doesn't look up.

"Yeah?"

"You remember Joel Theriot?"

"That preacher from way back, the tent ministry. I remember."

"You remember that day, and what he said?"

Marty cuts squares of tape and rolls out gauze, "Remember the gist of it, yeah."

He looks up at Rust then, sees his eyes closed and goes back to bandaging, "Mostly remember you not bein' too impressed."

Rust puts his hands onto Marty's shoulders for balance, feels solid and present yet travelling backward.

"I wasn't. Meant what I said about religion. I'm talking about what he said. And how I never gave it much thought, but while I was down in that place with you, and sittin' in that hospital bed, I could hear him, Marty."

Marty puts down the scissors and looks up again, "Like, in your head?"

"Like it was a memory, you know. Called up from wherever. Happened a few times in the hospital. I chalked it up to all the drugs. But I could hear him, Marty. Tellin' his truth to everyone and having to hear everyone's lies."

Marty presses his thumbs gently to the tape and seals off the bandage over Rust's stitches. "I liked his preachin'. You ever wonder what happened to him?"

Rust's eyelids clench, and his fingers knead into Marty's shoulders, "What happens to everyone when they get lost. When they're alone."

****

The gown's next.

Marty jokes he'll test out the fireplace and burn the fucking thing.

That gets the tiniest of smiles from Rust.

Marty helps him into a pair of blue flannel pajama bottoms, careful of his new bandage. There's a soft, white jersey t-shirt with the memories of a hundred washings, and maybe a few afternoons on a clothesline in the sun. Rust lifts the collar and sniffs it while Marty's out of the room, disposing of his hospital gown with a noisy flourish of a garbage bag.

Rust brushes his teeth -- new brush in the cabinet, Marty's thought of everything -- while Marty stands sentinel by the gap in the bathroom door.

"Can brush my damn teeth without fallin' down, " Rust says.

"Prove it, " Marty answers.

Marty piles pillows near the center of the headboard, as close as he can get to a tilted hospital bed.

Rust settles in without complaint, though Marty keeps both ears out for them.

He puts the blue box of smokes on the bedside table, near Rust's lighter, a coffee mug and a glass of water.

"Anything else? You good?"

Rust takes his gaze from the ceiling and cuts his eyes to the huge empty space next to him, "Grab your shit off the couch and sleep in your goddamn bed."

Marty does.

***

Sleep comes easy for Marty, now that he feels he's done right by people in his life. He's in the bed less than ten minutes before Rust hears his breathing even out.

He envies that easy peace, before he corrects himself and thinks that peace for Marty was never easy. He'd had to fight for it. He'd had to fight himself.

Rust replays Theriot's sermon in his head, like a scratchy phonograph recording, dented and spaced by time and memory.

It's true, he didn't give much thought at all to preaching, but Theriot was that mirror held up to himself. Different paths, same goal, nearly the same outcome. He hopes the man found some peace, doubts he'd given up the bottle. But the man had been onto something ; had spoken from the heart with an ideal that Rust scorned in his former life, and slowly discovered in this new one.

Rust glances over at Marty in the dark, discerns the space Marty inhabits by its forms and voids.

The longer he gazes, the louder Theriot's voice echoes. Down that road of Time that grows the things that Live. Down those roads to the nexus of a Moment, of truth, and confession under a night sky, holding a blue box of promise.

_"In the end we will find ourselves at the beginning and will at last know ourselves, and our true faces with weep in his light, and those tears, those tears will fall like warm rain."_


	17. Elastic

  
Marty's first night of restful sleep in his new house turns into a morning that goes sideways at the first sliver of dawn. He hasn't hooked up his landline, so his cell phone explodes at six A.M when he turns it on.

"So much for the Great Escape," Rust murmurs.

Marty groans, rubs his face in both hands and shakes his head.

"Front door still intact?"

Marty gets up, "For now."

Rust throws back the blanket and sets his feet on the carpet. Marty helps him to the bathroom. Rust can stand for five minute intervals between resting.

Marty goes back into his bedroom to change his clothes, and hears his phone still rumbling on his dresser.   
He scoops it up, "Hello?"

***

Rust scrubs at his face and his teeth, inspecting drawers and the medicine cabinet with purpose. He can hear Marty in the bedroom, arguing on the phone.

Marty reappears at the bathroom door in blue jeans and a red flannel shirt.

"That was Gilbough. Now that I've poached you out from under them -- his words, not mine -- they want your statement."

Rust stares at his reflection in the mirror, calm as a pond in spring, "All right. When're we going?"

Marty shakes his head, "Ain't puttin' you in the car. They're coming here." Marty slaps his hand on the doorframe, "I'm sick of going to them. Rules change, they step in that door."

"And how's that?"

"Gonna throw 'em out if they piss me off."

A corner of Rust's mouth quirks upward, "Make sure you open the door first."

***

Marty sets out cheese, fruit, coffee and oatmeal. Starts making a shopping list. His phone rings again, and he nearly drops it in the trash.

"Hello?"

Maggie.

"Marty? Lafayette General just phoned me. Rust's gone?"

"He's with me."

"I was told he had two days til he was let go."

"Well, he decided different."

"And you agreed?"

"Was kinda hard not to, really."

"Marty, what if he gets hurt?"

"Well, that's what I'm here for. There wasn't anyone else, Maggie. I'm goin' by the hospital, I'll take care of it. They give me forms, I'll bring them home and he'll fill them out and take 'em back. I got those cops coming over to take his statement about what's happened. I got it. I'll handle it."

Maggie's quiet for a minute before she says, "I went by your place, Marty. It's empty."

"Course it is. I moved."

"You. Moved?"

"We haven't talked since you brought me my car, Mags. It's been almost four weeks. A lot can happen in four weeks. Shit, a lot can happen in four seconds."

"Where'd you move to?" She sounds baffled, like he'd made the Statue of Liberty disappear.

"Still in Lafayette. 924 Rosedawn Lane. You should come by sometime. Bring Ted. Be nice to have an actual conversation. I'll call you in a couple hours, okay?"

He doesn't wait for her to respond as he hangs up.

***

Marty finds Rust wiping his face on a towel, and capping a can of Barbasol shaving cream.

"You shaved. What's the occasion?"

Rust reaches out for Marty's shoulder and they hobble to the kitchen, "Felt like I needed it. Also, if those assholes are coming by, I want them off-balance. I know what they're expecting to see. You changed the setting, so they gotta come here. I'm gonna need you to run by my place and pick up some things. You got a pen?"

Marty helps Rust into a chair at the table and Rust starts eating. Marty hands over a yellow legal pad and a pen from an open box marked "Office Supplies".

"Somethin' botherin' you I should know about?" Marty asks.

Rust sips from a glass of orange juice while he writes, "I had to sit across from those fuckers and listen to them play "Smartest Man in the Room"for a whole day. Besides the beer, was a waste of my day to find out they didn't know shit.

Marty sits next to him, and drags his green tea over, "And that's usually your game."

Rust snorts, "It ain't a game. Thing is, they can find all the pieces but can't build narrative for shit. Take country music for example -- you play that shit backwards you find your lost dog, your woman comes home, and your truck starts. Narrative and context, and the order in which it happens."

Marty laughs into his mug, "Not if you're a Johnny Cash fan."

"What I'm sayin' is, they didn't have everything when they were talkin' to me, but they had enough to think I was the fucking killer. You know how that felt, that shit we were chasing, and up to now, to hear those two rounding up to thinking I did it? Of course it fucking bothers me. I'm out there going "Hey look at this shit, this is important" and meanwhile Heckle and Jeckle are pointing at the wrong shit and going, "I think he did it." Fuck, I never thought I'd say this but it's like God and fuckin' Moses. God had to light shit on fire before that dumbass would pay fuckin' attention."

Marty curls his hands around his mug, "You have a point."

Rust jabs a finger at the air, "So now, they're thinking, "Well, we should talk to Cohle. Gotta be thorough."

"So, they'll talk, and we'll talk. Even the playing field. None of this two-on-one bullshit, " Marty says,

***

Marty digs out his landline and sets it up over his cellphone while Rust finishes breakfast. Marty puts the dishes in the sink, and helps Rust back to his room.

"Now, you're sure you're gonna be okay for a couple hours? How's the bandage?"

Rust shifts his back against the pillows, "Fine. Still dry, not bleeding."

"Any pain?"

"Little bit, nothing I can't handle."

Marty crouches down and plugs his second cordless phone into the wall jack by the bed. He piles a stack of books on the bedside table next to the charging stand and drops the handset into it. The bars flash at half full.

"I'll be two hours, tops. Anything happens, " Marty points at the phone, "Hit 1 on the speed-dial. Anything beyond that, it's nine-one-one, okay?"

"I don't think it's gonna get to that, Marty, but I got it. Two hours is nothing."

Marty sighs, and feels tense and jittery but for what reason he can't place. He stops at the door and turns.

Rust looks across the room at him, and Marty has the strangest sense of time snapping backward.

"Two hours ain't hardly ninety seconds either, " Marty says as he leaves.

It's an eternity before Rust looks at something other than the empty doorway.


	18. Negative Space

 

Marty pulls up near Rust's truck outside Doumain's shuttered bar, and calls home.

He can't shake the feeling that Rust should be here. Marty feels like he's trespassing.

He passes Rust's truck, the smashed tail-light in his peripheral makes him hold his breath til he reaches the front door of the house.

He doesn't want to dwell on it.

When he finds the key under the mailbox and lets himself in, Marty understands why he's disturbed.

At the hospital, filling out forms, he'd managed to answer only a few questions. He'd put his own name under Emergency Contact. The blank line by Next of Kin made his vision blur. All that blank, white space and all he'd filled in was his name, and Rust's.

Standing in Rust's place without him there feels like an ending. Had things gone slightly more sideways, Marty'd still be standing here, but he'd be boxing up Rust's things, and taking them where?

Marty phones home, and the other end rings once before Rust answers.

"Yeah?"

Marty swallows around the lump in his throat, and says, "I'm at your place."

"You find the key?"

"Yeah."

"You lose the list?"

Marty cracks his jaw, putting the phone away from his face, "No, I just felt I should call you."

"What for?"

"Jesus. To see how you're doing. And that it feels weird, me bein' in your space when you're not here."

"Mmhmm. Know what you mean."

Marty turns a full circle, glancing around, "So where am I startin'?"

"Closet."

"Okay."

Rust's closet rattles open to reveal a utilitarian set-up that the Marines would appreciate. Rust doesn't have much, but he's neat and precise.

Rust directs him to a duffel bag and Marty fills it with clothes. Marty's foot connects with a red locker from not-so-long ago and Rust says, "Nothin' in there I need. Hopefully."

"You could hear that?" Marty says.

"I know exactly where you're standing," Rust says.

The sentence causes a strange feeling in Marty's spine. Like fingers, walking up his vertebrae to the top of his head.

There's a heavy bag hanging at the end of the closet rail that makes him think of body bags, with its shiny black sheen and chromed zipper. Marty reaches past corduroys and suit jackets and pulls the zipper to satisfy some feral curiousity.

When he touches the smoky, aged leather inside, there's a metallic clink, and sibiliant rasp in his ear that clenches his toes and makes him look to the door.

"Marty..."

"Yeah?"

"The bookshelf next."

Marty doesn't believe Rust can read his mind, but right now he's not sure of anything. He gathers himself and his eyes widen, "Are you smoking in my house?"

He can hear Rust answer around the cigarette, "Might be."

Marty tries for indignation but his brain gives him sentences like _Are you smoking in my bed? Are you burning holes in my sheets?_ And then there are images.

"I just got that house, man. Don't burn it down."

"I'm only havin' the one, Marty. Makin' it last. Now, the bookshelf."

Marty crouches by two beer crates bridged by a wide plywood plank. The shelf is make-shift, but the books are well-kept.

"Lot less murder books here, " Marty says. He looks the volumes over as he puts them in a Lone Star box.

_The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying_, _The Upanisads_ , _The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman_ , Rust's old friend Nietszche...

" _Twilight of the Idols_ , Marty?" Rust says.

"How's that?"

"Found it in your stack of football, and fly fishin' books. Heavy reading?"

Marty puts _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ in the box, and says, "Helps me sleep."

Rust makes an amused, rumbling "Hmmm" at that, and Marty goes back to the shelf.

"Jack Kerouac?"

"Mmmhmm."

"Never read him."

"He's got his self-pity moments, and he drinks a lot, but his early stuff is good."

Marty flips through  _On The Road_ , _Satori in Paris_ , _The Dharma Bums_ , a small book titled _Pomes All Sizes_ , and lastly _Desolation_ _Angels._

There's an envelope addressed to Marty between the pages, he sees. There's no return address, and no stamp. But the address is Hart Investigative Solutions.

Marty closes the book and leaves the envelope inside.

"So, what happened to all your murder manuals?"

"Storage unit. Which reminds me, swing by your office and grab that shit."

Marty switches ears with the phone, "Already got that. Boxes are upstairs on the left."

"Well, look at you, thinkin' of everything."

"I try."

Marty piles in poem books written by Jim Morrison, _Meditations_ by Marcus Aurelius, some guy named Kierkegaard, and another guy called Voltaire.

"I got your books."

"Don't forget the lockbox and the two under the bed."

"Right."

Marty looks under the low bedframe and finds two black notebooks of different sizes and a chrome lockbox with a combination dial.

The largest black book Marty would recognize anywhere. The smaller one is newer. He doesn't open them.

"Ok, now I got everything."

Rust is silent on the other end of the phone.

"Rust?"

"Yeah?" Rust sounds far away, and softer than Marty's ever heard him.

"On my way back."

"Okay. Hey Marty...?"

"Yeah?" Marty says, the phone wedged in his shoulder as he hefts the box of books and the duffel bag.

"You read all of that Nietszche book?"

"Got to the middle. Probably finish it eventually. Why'd you ask?"

"No reason. It's good to finish things though."

"All right then. I'll talk to you in a bit."

They hang up.

***

Rust puts the cordless back in the charging stand and closes Marty's book.

He's careful about the photo inside.


	19. Touched

 

The first claw-scratching-swipes of a nightmare are chased away by Marty's hands. Rust struggles up out of the dark.

"Hey. Hey there, " Marty says, his hands up in a gesture Rust made famous. Those same hands help Rust to his feet and tuck him against Marty's side like iron to a magnet.

Marty stands waiting while Rust uses the toilet. When he's called for, Marty goes in and runs the faucets in the bathtub. He hauls in a low step-stool and puts it in the water for Rust to sit on. Once Rust's stitches are shielded with thick plastic and waterproof tape, Marty washes his back while Rust cleans everything else.

Marty washes his hair. Rust was going to leave it.

The fingers against his scalp call up small memories and craft ones that didn't happen. Rust's teeth worry at his lips while Marty rinses the shampoo away, pressing a dry face cloth over his eyes.

"Marty?"

"Hmm?"

"Need you to go for a bit."

Marty stands up and leaves the bathroom door open a sliver as he heads to the kitchen.

Rust comes after four efficient strokes. He pulls the tub stopper by its chain with his toes and stares at the blank, white porcelain until the water drains away.

He calls for Marty in a voice that isn't unsteadied by pain, but by something akin to it.

Marty doesn't say anything. Not even as he wraps Rust in a towel and dries his hair.

Rust moves against Marty like blackstrap molasses off a knife-blade. His mouth is flooded with the taste-textures of tupelo honey, bourbon, and cinnamon.

"Are you gonna be all right?" Marty says.

A memory surfaces. An apartment in another life. Marty with that same question. The same question Lucinda Williams sang about. That same question he never had to answer before because no one ever asked it.

Here and now, Rust imagines the Marty of long-ago tastes like powdered sugar, almonds and gun-oil.

Rust's eyelids fall shut while he licks his lips and curses his stitches, "Mmmhmm."

Marty removes the plastic from his bandage. Peels back the gauze and tape and remarks the drainage is clear.

Rust sees his hands tremble as he tapes up a fresh, new bandage. He wonders about Marty and gentleness in other ways, and the low noise in his throat makes the back of Marty's neck flush hot and rosy under his hands.

Marty re-bandages Rust's right arm. Rust wonders if Marty feels his pulse jumping in his wrist.

Marty unwraps the gauze like he's uncovering a relic. The gouges in his bird's wing are healing.

When his arm is done, Marty helps him dress. He doesn't hurry, and is careful about everything. Marty says nothing about the jut of Rust's hipbones while he threads a belt through pant-loops and Rust cinches it. Marty's quiet putting an undershirt over his head and working his arms through. When Marty steps behind him, guiding arms into a blue, long-sleeved button-up shirt, Rust plays everything in reverse inside his head like a film reel.

Marty gathers his hair and ties it back. Rust adds a new detail in his head, and his jaws clench..

"Brought everything you asked for, " Marty says. "Stacked the boxes in the corner while you were sleeping."

Rust thinks of what he can't ask for.

"Thank you." The words come out low; felt more than heard.

"Got a call gettin' in the door, " Marty says, facing him now. "They're forty-five minutes out."

"Okay, " Rust says as Marty guides him to the foot of the bed.

Marty leaves and comes back with a glass of water, a painkiller and an antibiotic. Helps him get comfortable. Even gives Rust his pillow from the other side of the bed.

"I'll be okay, Marty. Go do whatever you need to. They're gonna ask you again what happened, I bet. Come get me when it's time."

Marty nods and leaves the bedroom door wide open.

Rust keeps his hands pressed flat to the cotton sheets while he waits for the painkillers to catch him.


	20. Broken

 

Marty pours his glass of green tea down the sink. He runs the tap and succumbs to a corialus hypnosis of swirling water, with both hands braced against his unscarred kitchen counter. The running water works better than white noise. He's grateful for those few minutes of zero thoughts. His first clear thought is of putting the stopper in the drain, filling the sink, and plunging head-first into it. Holding his breath doesn't include itself in this plan.

He refills his tea glass with water, and slams off the tap. Marty presses the cold glass to his cheek as he notes the time.

Thirty minutes to go. If they're speeders, even less.

Marty drains the glass, and watches the seconds tick by. The numbers on the clock face go fuzzy around the edges.

His fingers go numb. Gravity and condensation send the glass plummeting to the hardwood, exploding into shards.

Marty startles at the sound and backpedals into the hallway. He catches himself at the wall and his legs turn to water, swirling down a drain. Gravity pulls him down the wall, his heartbeat and breathing like twin bass drums.

"Marty?"

Marty peers down the hall at his open bedroom door. His face crumples and he covers his face. He's woken up Rust.

Marty bites down on his knuckles, tries to still the tide of panic as it rises in his chest. He's managed to weather every one alone. The thought of being seen like this, especially by Rust, triples his terror.

"Marty?" Rust again. Sharper. Insistent. "You okay?"

Marty can't answer. Any noise he makes is broken and wilted. He shuts his eyes, presses the heels of his hands to them and sobs.

There's a long shadow and soft footsteps, and Marty sees Rust leaning heavy on the bedroom doorframe.

"Heard something break. You didn't answer. You okay?"

Marty nods though his face is a ruin of misery.

Rust shuffles down the hall toward Marty.

"I'm okay, " Marty chokes out.

"I doubt that, " Rust says as he reaches out for Marty's arm and sits down next to him.

"Hmm? What's the real reason, Marty? Talk to me."

"Your stitches, " Marty says, "You're gonna..."

"They're fine. They're still fuckin' there."

"You should be resting."

"Those drugs are fuckin' potent. I'm not hurtin'. Besides, I am resting. I'm sittin' down, aren't I?"

Rust folds himself against Marty until Marty pulls him closer.

"Besides, I can't get up til you do anyhow. You're not okay, Marty. I'm not okay. So, what's our problem?"

Marty shudders as he breathes, "I was in the kitchen. I broke a glass. I got scared."

"And when you're scared, what do you do?"

Marty's eyes fall to his hands, "Get angry." Marty sniffles. "Cry. I never used to. And now I'm gonna have to talk about...all that shit. I don't want to flake out now, you know. When it matters, and there's shit I gotta say and I gotta have my fucking head on straight to do it."

Rust covers Marty's hands with his left, and presses the palm of his right hand in the span of Marty's shoulders.

"Then you don't let them run you, okay? We all sit down, you take your time. They start to run you, you can tell 'em to get out. Or I'll tell them to fuck off."

"Don't do that."

"Marty?"

"Yeah?"

"This the first time you've been scared?"

Marty draws a deep breath and lets it out slow, "No."

"So, you got through it. How'd you do it?"

Marty shakes his head, "Don't know. Just did."

Rust's hands are warm, and he's not afraid anymore.

"Felt like something broke inside, you know...afterward. And I wasn't ever gonna be the same, and I didn't know how to be different."

Rust rests his forehead near Marty's ear, "People are never the same minute to minute, really. But I know what you mean."

" I didn't want to be the Angry Guy, right? Because I was always the Angry Guy. And now, I'm walking around losing pieces like a goddamn puzzle. If I broke a glass six months ago, it'd annoy the fuck out of me. Now I'm breaking shit and thinking _I'm_ the goddamn glass."

"Mmmhmm."

Rust rubs at his shoulders and Marty closes his eyes.

"Speakin' of that glass, I can see it from here. You gonna clean that up, or just leave it there as a welcome gift?"

"Not thinkin' about that at present."

There are no thoughts in Marty's head, but there's a warm and weighted silence. Rust's hands are steady and solid, like his voice is now.

"The Japanese have a way to repair pottery when it breaks. They don't refer to it as repairing. It's called joinery. A re-joining of pieces, and they use lacquers mixed with metals -- like platinum, and silver. And gold. They see the breaking and joining of an object as important. Part of the object's history. Doesn't disguise the flaws, but enhances them. There are broken bowls, and tea cups, and vases, and all the seams where they're joined is filled with gold. It's called kintsugi."

"Sounds pretty. And really smart."

"Mmmhmm."

Marty tilts his head and sees Rust with his eyes closed. He cranes his neck to look past his kitchen table and sees the glass glittering on the floor.

They should get up.

Marty closes his eyes and relaxes against the quiet rhythm of Rust, subtle as a heartbeat. He thinks back to a time where he couldn't wait another second for Gilbough and Papania to get to them.

Now, he thinks he could wait a little longer.


	21. Recall - (First Take)

  
Detective Thomas Papania wrinkles his nose as he parks at the curb of 924 Rosedawn Lane.

"This the address Hart gave you? You sure?"

Detective Maynard Gilbough nods slow and easy, "It is. Marty said he moved. Can't blame the man. Fresh starts are good."

Gilbough undoes his seatbelt, "You get on in your years, you get those less and less."

Papania removes the key from the ignition, "Whatever. Can't imagine what a fresh start for a dude like Cohle'd look like.

***

Up the driveway, Gilbough wanders over to the twin red maples in front of the house.

"Hey, these are nice, " he murmurs, and closes his eyes to listen to the leaves.

Papania stands on the flat strip of driveway, hands on his hips, "You done moonlighting for Better Homes and Gardens, or are we gonna get this done?"

"What's your hurry?" Gilbough says, walking toward the front door.

"Didn't drive all this way so you could flounce around some damn tree you'd ignore every other day."

They step up to the door and Gilbough knocks twice.

"Remember, keep your cool. This ain't a shakedown. This is the man's house, " Gilbough adds.

Papania shoves his hands in his pockets as Marty opens the door. Marty greets Gilbough first, and nods at Papania to come inside.

***

Papania sits in the chair Marty offers. Says yes to a glass of water. Gilbough says he'll take a coffee, if Marty'd oblige.

Rust watches Papania through his eyelashes. Rust sees the other man glance at the clock on the wall, and then to Rust's glass of sweet tea. Papania makes complete eye contact, and both brows go up in mock surprise.

Rust drinks from his glass of tea like it's cold Lone Star and stares right back at Papania.

Marty doesn't sit in the last chair. He leans up against the counter, with a perfect sight-line over Rust's head at Papania.

"So, " Marty says, "who's first?"

Gilbough opens his thick file and uncaps a pen, "Once more, Marty, like you tell it. What do you remember?"

Rust turns his glass in small half-motions, thinking about the blue box on the bedside table. He hasn't had a smoke in two days. A drink in more than four weeks. And until Gilbough and Papania showed up, he's been okay with not wanting either vice indulged.

He's had other things on his mind.

 

Marty talks. It's a breakdown of tax records, and names, and hunches. Gilbough prods him to elaborate about his state of mind once they'd arrived at the Childress place. Papania sees Rust go still.

"I went up to the house, because there's no cell service that far out. Was gonna ask to use the phone," Marty says. His words come out clipped and methodical.

"And then?" Papania cuts in. Rust looks up from his glass and stares.

"And then, " Marty continues, "I started talkin' to her. Hit me straight off she wasn't all there. The whole place smelled _off_."

"Go on, " Gilbough says.

"And she told me she didn't have a phone, and I asked her who she was livin' there with. And then I just got done screwin' around with her crazy shit and asked where he was."

"Who's that?" Papania asks.

"Billy Childress."

"And what'd she say?" Gilbough again.

Marty focuses on the back of Rust's head, "She said he was all around us. 'Before you were born, and after you die.' "

Papania nods, "Sounds like the shit she spouted off when we found her. Total crazy tweaker shit. You tied her to the banister."

Marty nods. Rust hasn't moved.

"Did a little more, the way she tells it, " Papania says.

"Didn't have any time to waste," Marty says.

"You threatened her, " Papania says.

"Like I said," Marty continues, his voice flat and cold, "I was done screwin' around."

Gilbough pipes up, "And where was Rust?"

Marty clears his throat, "He told me to clear the house. After the dog ran out. And then I didn't see him until..."

Marty looks at the floor, and Gilbough and Papania turn their attention to Rust.

"So, you went off chasin' Errol Childress?"

Rust doesn't take his eyes off the ring of water left by his tea glass, "I did. I chased him. I held my gun on him before that. Told him to get down on his knees. He said no. He ran. I followed."

"Some tricky shit, that place. You weren't worried about mines and shit, like with Ledoux?" Papania says.

Rust wipes his hand over the water on the table, smearing it away, "Carcosa isn't a drug den. It's a kingdom."

Near the counter, Marty shuts his eyes and breathes deep. He's not gonna lose it now. He can't.

Papania and Gilbough crowd near Rust at the table, and Gilbough nods to his partner.

"How you mean kingdom?" Papania says.

"He wouldn't mine the place. He didn't need to. You saw it. It's this whole other world. It's his world, you see? He knew it. He lived in it, and he built it. Twenty years he added to it, and killed in it, and ruled in it, " Rust says, an old fervor building in his voice.

"You don't need weapons when everyone who goes down there is tied and blindfolded. " Rust adds. He turns his full attention to Papania, "When you got down there. You have flashlights? Guns? People with you?"

Papania nods, " Of course we did. Was dark when we arrived. Had the flares out and everything."

Rust's head tilts at that, and Marty pushes off the counter to brace his hands on the back of Rust's chair.

"So you brought the cavalry. Did it make you feel safe down there?"

Papania glances down at the table, "No."

"You ever wonder what it'd be like to be blindfolded and dragged down there? What it smells like, what it feels like. And you can't see, and somehow you know you don't want to. Because if you had to look, you'd want to die right in that tunnel before you got to the end?"

Gilbough speaks up, "We lit that place up when we found you all. Cleared the way for the paramedics. Got you on your way. You were out. Marty was raving. After a minute, he blacked out. Lot of blood."

"How'd you find him, Marty? We got lost in that place. Got teams mapping that whole area out. There's false starts and dead ends everywhere. Not to mention the bones and the branches, " Gilbough says.

"I called out for him, when I was still outside. He answered, and I couldn't see him. He'd had quite the head start on me, so I just looked for footprints and such, " Marty says. He focuses on a fold in Rust's t-shirt. "I think I went the wrong way, but...I was so scared. The bodies. The piles of clothes. Like those death camps, you know? I couldn't find him until I heard him again, and that was...was awful. I came into that room and I was firin' blind. I hit Childress a couple times..."

"Four, " Papania corrects him.

Marty looks up over Rust's head, "All the fucking good it did, huh?"

Rust leans back in his chair, presses against Marty's fingers with his shoulders.

"Cohle had the head shot. Pretty damn impressive, stab wound bein' what it is, " Papania says.

"Still had the knife stuck in me, " Rust says, "Should add that to the C.I.D training regimen."

Gilbough and Papania go silent.

"How'd you know where to go?" Gilbough asks Rust.

"I heard him, " Rust says, "Callin' to me while I chased him. He said, 'Come in here, little man. Come in here with me.'"

"And after that?"

"I followed some tunnels. I was listening. Didn't hear anything."

"And then you found that room? He get the jump on you?"

Rust pauses, then says, "Something like that, yeah. He hit me with his fuckin' hammer, " Rust holds up his right arm, " and then he stabbed me. Lifted me off the ground. I broke his nose, nearly broke my own fuckin' skull, and then he let go and I hit the dirt...and that's all I remember."

Rust feels Marty's hands at his shoulders, so much like the hands at his face in the bright dark. He's keeping that for himself.

Some things are meant to be secret.


	22. Recall - (Second Take)

  
  
"Y'all catch the news?" Papania says.

Rust drags his glance up from his tea glass, "World's still turnin'. What else is there to know? Don't need a television for that."

Papania lets out a done-up sigh, "Thought you'd wanna know the stories breakin' out from this thing. People who were in that Tuttle program are talkin'. Coming forward about Billy Lee. And this is from clergy and congregation. Kids who got hurt. People who got silenced."

Rust finishes his tea, "That'll happen. People'll talk. Then they'll get quiet."

"Senator made a statement, " Gilbough adds.

"Because there's no such thing as bad P.R., huh?"

"Says there'll be an investigation, " Papania says.

Rust laughs. It's a dry, smoke-broken sound that walks knife-edged fingers up Marty's spine.

"Somethin' funny about that?" Papania says, looking none too impressed.

"It's not funny, " Rust says, "but I've heard a variation of this shit, years ago. Because it doesn't end, okay? It doesn't."

Gilbough leans forward, "What doesn't end? Childress is dead. His only other known relative is locked up. She ain't going anywhere. By what we've found, thanks to you all, there is no more Yellow King. Couple months, state'll burn out that place."

"Twenty years is a long time." Rust says, " To someone without time, it's nothing. Errol Childress spent effort for his vision. He didn't pick it out of a fucking hat. He learned it. And when you learn something, whether it's how to make a fire, kill an animal, wear its skin and survive, or work a blade, you pass that on. Do you get where I'm going with this? Reggie and Dewall were part of that. You gonna try and tell me there wasn't anyone else?"

Papania leans back on his chair, "You mean that videotape?"

Marty shuts his eyes and stands up, "I need a minute."

Rust tracks Marty as he leaves the kitchen, then pulls his chair up to the table and rests his forearms on it.

"What I mean is that nothing exists independent of itself. Nature abhors a vacuum, " Rust says.

"Ain't none of what we found even close to natural, as you call it, " Papania says.

"But it _is_ natural.That was his nature. His order out of his universe. See, you have to understand that he was free to operate how he pleased. He went up and down the coast all that time. And nobody saw him until he wanted them to. Must have been like pickin' fruit. And nobody saw him til it was too late."

Marty comes back into the kitchen and sits down, "Sorry. What'd I miss?"

Gilbough shakes his head, "Nothin' to be sorry about, Marty. It's not anything anyone can stomach."

"Anyone with a conscience, anyhow, " Rust adds.

"Well, we saw him, " Papania says, "After you all got cleared out, they moved him. I didn't recognize him at first -- 'course most of his fuckin' head was missin' - but I did eventually. We went lookin' for that church y'all talked about from way back. The black ministry? Stopped on the side of this road and asked for directions. Guy was ridin' on a lawnmower, cuttin' grass for a cemetery."

Rust stares at Papania, "What'd he tell you?"

Papania shrugs, "Said Son of Life church got blown out in oh-five. After all the hurricanes."

"He'd gone back there, " Rust nods to himself, "Like Pelican Island."

"What now?" Gilbough says.

"I'd seen him before, you know. Marty and I were runnin' names, looking for Reggie Ledoux. Ended up on Pelican Island. The former Tuttle school. Light of the Way Academy. Place was flooded out, but he was there. Cuttin' the grass. I went back there, later in oh-two. He'd been there. Found those devil-nets, and black stars on the broken windows. I walked right up to him, plain as day in ninety-five, and had no fuckin' idea."

The room is quiet for a minute before Marty says to Gilbough, "So, we all saw him. And he's dead now. What else are you hopin' to get?"

"Hope you'd have some thought about any loose ends, " Papania says, "We get anything else from the house and such, we give you a call?"

Marty sighs, breath running out in a puffed exhale, "Use the office number. I don't want that shit here."

Gilbough nods, "Appreciate it, Marty."

"Thank you, " Marty says.

Papania stands, "Don't get up. We'll show ourselves out."

Gilbough gathers his file, "Nice place you have here, Marty."

"Yeah, I like it. Still workin' on it, " Marty says.

"Well, we'll be in touch."

Rust pushes back from the table and stands up.

"Right. We'll talk some other time, " Marty says.

Marty shuts the door after Papania and Gilbough get in their car.

Rust is nearly down the hall when Marty says, "If you're lookin' for your cigarettes, I got 'em."

Marty waits til Rust shuffles back to the kitchen. Rust doesn't stop at the table, and makes his way over to Marty.

"Outside, " Rust says.

***

They settle on the stone steps. Rust taps out a smoke and lights it.

"How'd you know?" Rust says, holding up his cigarette.

Marty gives him a look, "Because you get twitchy without 'em."

Rust replies, " Haven't been twitchy for a while now. Guess those guys just bring that out."

He looks sidelong at Marty, at how he scrubs at his forearms. Rust puts his lit cigarette between his middle finger and his index finger and lights a new one, passing it to Marty.

Marty scrutinizes it for a second before putting it in his mouth, "These are disgusting."

"Chewin' tabacco's fuckin' foul."

"Point taken."

They smoke in silence, watching the clouds move.

Rust exhales a stream of smoke, " I didn't tell 'em everything."

Marty flicks ash off onto the brick walkway, "Me neither."

"And why not?"

"Because I didn't want to."

"Why's that?"

" 'Cause it's not for them to know. No sense offerin' answers to shit they don't ask about."

Rust nods at that, "Good plan."


	23. Sanctuary

 

"Wasn't quite as painful as you thought, huh?"

Papania turns from the repetitive tree-house-tree-house-gas-station-slideshow out his window to stare at his partner.

"How's that?"

Gilbough doesn't take his eyes off the road. "You goin' in there, all fully-loaded, like it was gonna be a fight. Was a real sit-down. "

"You notice Cohle?"

Gilbough nods as he signals, and turns left, "Looks loads better since the hospital. Wasn't drinkin'. Didn't even smoke."

"Same attitude though. Dude's still slanted all crazy. Ain't never gonna get a straight answer outta him for anything, " Papania says.

"Then we talk to Marty. He's personable enough, I guess. Til he ain't."

"Around a guy like Cohle all the time, personable don't mean shit."

Gilbough slows the car and stops at a red light, "We asked our questions. We got answers. Marty's on board, we need any help. Now we don't have any questions. So, we gotta go lookin' again."

Papania grimaces, "And what if we need Cohle?"

" I imagine we'd ask him nice enough, he'd agree, " Gilbough deadpans.

"Long as we ask him the right fuckin' questions, " Papania says.

***

Marty helps Rust stand up. Rust slings his arm across Marty's shoulders, while Marty curves an arm that brushes fingers at Rust's hip. They've managed to avoid crushing any toes. Marty turns to the house while Rust takes a step to the walkway.

"Hey, " Rust says, cigarette burning at the corner of his mouth, "What's the nickel tour of this place like?"

Marty laughs, and they start down the steps, "It's real nice.

The sun-warmed stone tingles Rust's feet. The breaths he pulls into his lungs teem with scents and flavours of green stalks, clear running sap, and clay. Rust sways when he stares up into the branches of the maple trees, boughs wreathed in russet leaves.

Marty loops his other arm around Rust's waist, and takes care to watch his feet, "You got somethin' against shoes?"

Rust balances himself and stares downward. He wiggles his toes in the soft grass, "Guess I just like having my feet under me after a while."

Rust is sure he's not the only one feeling the warm current passing through and around himself. And that it's not a spontaneous sunburn crawling up Marty's neck.

They move again, with Marty's hand at his hip, toward the rear of the house.

The back entrance opens on a square group of tiles done in a chessboard pattern.

"Here, I was thinkin' I'd put a grill, or somethin'. Have the girls over for dinner. Maggie's husband don't seem too keen on  
ever talkin' to me, but I keep makin' the effort, " Marty says.

The resignation in his voice is clear. Rust folds his palm on the back of Marty's neck, and moves to squeeze his shoulder, "You're making the effort, Marty. Cut yourself some slack."

With all the green space and the expanse of hedges around the property, Marty's place has its own feeling of sanctuary.

Rust points toward the furthest maple tree, his cigarette wafting into the air, "You bought the place, that swing was there?"

Marty nods, "I like the way it feels, seeing it there. Seems a shame to get rid of it. Think the family that moved out had kids."

Rust moves over to the rope and clapboard tree swing, like something out of Mark Twain's stories, and sits down.

"I ain't pushin' you, " Marty says, not trying to hide his grin.

"Wouldn't think of it," Rust says, trailing his feet over the grass as he pushes off with a heel stained with clay.

"Don't go breaking anything, okay?"

Rust nods, looking at Marty through his lashes as he drags on the rest of his smoke, "Sure won't."

"You rip your stitches, I'm gonna tell the E.R. people your second childhood couldn't fuckin' wait, " Marty says.

Rust makes a rolling motion with his hand holding the cigarette, "Go on, then. Don't need no audience for fuckin' up."

Marty laughs on his way back inside.

While he's at the sink later, rinsing pasta in a colander, Marty looks out the kitchen window.

There's Rust, stepping light around the twinned roots of both trees, running his hands over the bark with his head tipped to the sky,

Marty keeps that for himself. A stream of photos taken with shutter-quick blinks of his eyelids. He blames the stinging on the steam rising from the sink.

He doesn't have an excuse for the smile.


	24. Sandcastle

Marty mentions Rust's stitches look like they're ready to come out. Rust calls up Lafayette General and asks quick, clipped questions.  
He hangs up, and Marty grabs his keys and off they go. Marty's own scar is a pink ridge on his collarbone that Marty looks at in the mirror until he pulls a shirt over it. Then he thinks nothing of it.

At least not while he's awake.

Marty takes hammer-blows from Errol Childress every night. His last breath in his nightmares is the first one he takes upon waking.

He wonders what Rust dreams of, but never asks.

***

The waiting room has one other person besides Marty. Soon he's alone, waiting for Rust. Marty rubs at his knuckles, stares at the lines on his palms. This last week he's come out of nightmares to the sensation of someone holding his hand. He doesn't ask Rust anything. The other man is always asleep when Marty wakes.

Rust drifts while his sutures are removed. He hears his doctor rattle off instructions - keep taking the pills, keep it clean, don't lift anything. Rust doesn't feel the stitches come out. Hell, he didn't feel the knife when it went in. He lost the breath from his lungs, and felt the knife after that. Of course, riding high on adrenaline and pain wasn't new. Everything went blurry afterward, though. Rust's gaze wanders over the three divots in his side, the souvenirs from Port Houston.

He doesn't think of that part of his life now. Even though he knows it happened, it's further back in the loop. The more he dwells on that, the more he gathers how his life feels linear. That sense of moving forward.

His doctor pulls the last suture, and cleans the scar. Those latex fingers press into his stomach, so unlike Marty's touch that Rust flinches. He gets a clinical apology in return.

With his new, thinner bandage in place, Rust puts his shirt back on and returns to Marty in the waiting room. Marty's looking at the spread of his palm with such concentration that he doesn't look up until Rust brushes at his shoulder.

"All done, " Rust says.

"Good, "Marty says, "Anywhere else you need to go?"

Rust nods, "Yeah."

***

To Marty's surprise, their first stop is a barber. Rust strides into the shop like a gunslinger through batwing saloon doors. He sits in a maroon, padded chair that rises to a height. One swoosh of a blue plastic cape and the sound of snipping and shears, and time somehow rolls off Rust like surf from a shore. Marty lines up Rust against seventeen years of moments that happened and some that didn't, and isn't surprised that there are lines out of place.

If Rust notices Marty staring, he doesn't say anything.

Their second stop is Robert Doumain's bar. Rust walks with all of his old pace and purpose, stab wound be damned. He circles the perimeter of the bar. Rust checks the shuttered windows and the locked doors. Marty follows him to the house at the back, past the truck.

"You ever gettin' that fixed?" Marty asks.

Rust turns, one fluid movement, like a dancer.

"Fix what?" Rust says, his eyes telling Marty he knows what Marty's trying to say.

"The light," Marty points at the truck, "you didn't fix it?"

Rust says, "Nope."

"Why not?"

"Because what broke it wasn't fixed."

They look at one another until Rust turns back to the house again.

"So, you can fix it now, " Marty says to Rust's back.

"Yeah, " Rust says.

***

Rust enters the little house and does a short tour of it, checking for what's different.

"You think someone broke in?" Marty says, from the doorway.

"Nope. I know no one did, " Rust says.

"How's that?"

"There's no body."

Marty's brows draw together, "The hell's that mean?"

Rust gestures past Marty, "Outside."

Marty steps outside and sees a broad-shouldered biker in black jeans and a Sturgis, North Dakota t-shirt, saunter past Rust's truck. He looks like a younger version of Doumain, with brown hair instead of gray.

"You Cohle?" the man asks, staring straight at Rust.

Rust steps past Marty and puts out his hand, "I'm Rust Cohle."

The man shakes Rust's hand, "Nicky Doumain."

Marty watches Rust and Nicky talk. Low voices, and he doesn't catch much beyond the words "payment" and "contract."

Nicky pats Rust on the shoulder, and Rust returns the gesture. Nicky walks out of view for several minutes until the roar from his motorcycle erupts and he rides away.

"So, who's that?" Marty says, working at the inside of his cheek.

Rust slaps his hands on his thighs, "That's Robert's brother. I was checkin' on things."

Rust starts back towards Marty's car as Marty mulls over what things those are.

"What things?"

"Knew you were listenin'. What'd you catch?"

"Somethin' about payin' a contract?"

"Nicky's part of that. Was keepin' in touch since I told Robert to lay low."

They get in the car. When Marty shuts his door, he puts his hands on the wheel and says, "What contract?"

Rust taps out a cigarette and flips his lighter open, "Steve's."

Marty waits til Rust's cigarette is lit before he says, "I thought you were bluffing."

Rust takes a long drag of smoke and holds it in. When he exhales, he says, "Wasn't a bluff. I paid Robert what's known as a long-standing agreement. I needed some insurance on Fatass there. Could never trust him. Sure as fuck wasn't gonna trust him out on that boat. Everything I told that lying shit-sack was the truth. That contract extends. Robert released the evidence like I told him, when he didn't hear from me after. Nicky's got friends watchin' Robert's place while he's gone. Watchin' my shit too, in case Steve or anyone he knows comes around. Good call pullin' Steve's gun. You saved his life, Marty. Either I'd have shot him, or Robert would have, once we were done."

Marty drums his fingers on the steering wheel, "I didn't want him shot."

Rust turns to Marty then. Gives him a stare that makes Marty's neck flush and his breath pick up.

"Is that so?" Rust drawls.

"What?" Marty says, an edge in his tone.

"Nothing," Rust says, his attention drawn to the road and points beyond.

Marty starts the car, and they're away again.

"What if something happens to Robert?" Marty asks, after a while.

"Robert's got people. Good people. Guys like Nicky. Contract gets passed until I cancel it. Someone else'll pick it up."

"You gonna cancel it?"

"Nope. I want that fucker looking over his shoulder the rest of his life."

***

Later that week, Marty breaks a case that nets him a hefty payday. His client gains a rightful inheritance, and Marty's all smiles.

Rust basks in the energy Marty throws off. The air around Marty shimmers.

Marty makes plans. Calls his daughters. Tries again to wrangle Maggie and Ted to the house. Macie calls him back.

Maggie calls him, and Marty's face falls.

"What's wrong?" Rust says, looking up from his smaller, black notebook.

"Ted said no. Again." Marty's shoulders slump.

"What'd Macie say?"

"She said yes. She'll try to make it here next month. As for Audrey, I ain't pushin' her."

Rust caps his pen, and shuts his notebook, "She'll call you. Give her time."

***

Big plans on a Friday for Marty include a trip to Home Depot and a shoebox full of paint samples. The kitchen table is a rainbow version of three-card Monte. He orders Szechuan take-out and swaps out colours while Rust sprawls out on the couch and flips channels.

"How is it there's three hundred channels and nothing interesting?" Rust says.

"There's gotta be somethin' that interests you. History Channel's got all sorts of weird shit."

Marty stirs his noodles and swaps out a dark red for an earthy brown. He's bought drop-cloths and brushes and rollers, and plastic for the room he's claimed as an office. Now he just needs a palette.

He goes cold all the way to his toes at the scream that erupts from the television set.

Marty sets his take-out container down with more force than needed. Drops of sauce splatter on the samples and he wipes at them with napkins, "What the fuck are you watching?"

Rust is standing upright in a way Marty recognizes, save for the lack of a gun. The tendons on Rust's forearms are piano-wire taut. Marty rounds the couch, and picks the remote off the floor.

"Jesus, the fuckin' volume on this is bullshit."

The screen shows hand-held video footage of several teens running, screaming through the woods. Marty's stomach rolls and he shuts his eyes. He hopes he doesn't throw up.

A face fills the screen. A blonde girl in a knit hat, eyes wide with tears and fear. Rust reaches for Marty's hand and startles him.

"The remote, " Rust says, as Marty's grip on it slackens.

Rust points the remote at the television like it's a pistol and the screen winks to black.

Marty sits down heavy on the couch, his eyes shut tight, and breathes through his nose, "The fuck was that?"

Rust watches their black-tinted reflections against the television screen, "We went to the movies, in ninety-nine. Me, you, Maggie, Lori, Audrey, and Macie."

Marty opens his eyes on a slow exhale, "Shit."

"Laurie got motion sickness, from the camera I guess. Maggie went with her, sat in the lobby, " Rust says.

Marty nods, remembering.

Audrey and Macie hid behind their shared popcorn until Macie shrieked and dropped it. Audrey ran up the aisle, out to the lobby. Macie followed at her heels.

Marty and Rust sat glued to the screen until the blonde girl in the knit cap found the bundle of sticks. Rust stood up and muttered he needed a cigarette. Marty followed him outside.

They never saw the end.

There were worse things to see.

"How much you wanna bet when those devil-traps showed up again, people thought someone was just copying something they saw in a movie?"

"Meaning what?" Marty says.

"Nothing, " Rust says. He palms his lighter, and goes outside.

Marty goes back to his samples. He throws his noodles in the trash.

***

Sunday finds Marty back at Home Depot. He can't decide on his main color. He phones Rust for his opinion and gets _You don't want brown for an office._ _Go lighter._

Marty rules out pastels. Rust concurs, and says they hurt his teeth like cotton candy, but Marty can get whatever he likes. After half an hour deliberating in the aisle, Marty snaps up six more samples to take home.

His mind lingers on the words _Rust_ and _paint._

The store he walks into smells of beeswax, fresh glue, and cinnamon. Marty passes women with scrapbooks and little girls with tubes of glitter. He feels as though he's on a different planet. Marty flags down a young woman who reminds him of Uma Thurman in that movie where she danced barefoot with John Travolta. He reads the name Sharpied across her apron. Brittany.

"Uh, excuse me, miss, uh, Brittany?"

Brittany raises both brows and straightens her black-framed glasses, "Can I help you?"

Marty stammers his way through a spiel that ends with "It's a gift for a friend."

"So, he paints?"

"Not exactly. I mean, I've never seen him - uh, I think so?"

Brittany purses her lips, folds her arms across her chest and says, "Oils? Acrylics? Watercolor?"

Marty spreads his hands and says, "Maybe?"

"So, nothing specific but a bit of everything?"

Marty claps his hands together, "Yes. Let's go with that. You have anything that covers all the basics?"

"You ever ask your friend what he likes?"

Marty shakes his head slow, side to side.

"Call him and find out?"

"Uh, the thing of it is, this is kinda like a surprise?"

Her brows furrow and then her face lights up, "I have just the thing."

***

Brittany hefts a dark, wooden case onto her cashier counter.

"I wouldn't push this on anyone under normal circumstances, but it's worth a look. But's it's _fucking expensive_. Still, it has everything. I'd buy it in triplicate, if I had the cash."

Marty thumbs at the corners, done up like the front clasp in brassy metal. He opens the case and decides he doesn't give a shit what it costs. He's not leaving without it.

"Do you gift-wrap?" Marty asks.

Brittany's jaw drops a little, "You're gonna buy it?"

Marty shuts the case, "Yeah."

"You sure?"

Marty nods, "Absolutely."

Brittany rings his order through, and explains the return and refund policy three times.

"Buyers' remorse. I've been there. Not fun, " she says.

Marty folds the receipt and tucks it in his wallet. He knows about remorse, none of it involves money.

"So, about that gift-wrap?"

Brittany takes a tape measure from beside her till, measures the case, and scribbles on a Post-It note.

"You want something done up right, try the gift store down the street. This case is too heavy for regular wrapping paper.  
Try a box, maybe? Some ribbon?"

Marty hoists the case in his arms , drops his head a little and smiles, "Oh no, I don't think this is a ribbon kinda gift."

He doesn't elaborate, so Brittany's left to wonder.

***

Rust is outside when Marty gets home. He's not wearing shoes. Again.

Marty notes he's using the stone walkway, though.

He watches Rust disappear round back and ducks into the house, hoping to hide his purchase til later.

Marty shoves the box under the couch, careful not to crush it. He walks into the kitchen and fills a glass with tea. He drinks it at the sink with his eyes closed.

The low whistle at the window makes Marty crack an eyelid open.

"You find your paint?" Rust asks, his forearms pillowed on the windowsill.

Marty cracks a grin, "You could say that."

"Just did. What'd you get?"

Marty pulls another glass from the cupboard beside him and pours Rust some tea. He passes the glass and his six new samples through the window.

"Blue for the main wall, that cream sort of color for the wall with the windows, and the gray one for the shelves, " Marty says.

Rust sets his glass on the sill and flips through the samples.

"You wearin' shoes?" Marty says.

Rust turns a blue sample over, "Nope."

Marty finishes his own tea and rinses the glass, "Figures."

Rust waves the blue sample card, " _Azores_."

"What's that?" Marty says, too aware of his skin warming at the word Rust says.

"Your choice of blue. It's called _azores_."

"You don't like it?"

Rust looks at him with the sleepy gaze Marty swears he doesn't dream of.

"I like it fine, Marty."

"Doesn't make you, you know, feel weird?"

"No."

Rust hands the samples back, and shades his eyes against the glint of the car pulling into Marty's driveway.

"You got company, " Rust says, over his shoulder as he returns to the swing and the notebook that isn't his ledger.

Marty recognizes the car, and the driver. It's Ted's car, and Maggie's the sole occupant.

***

Rust surveys Maggie as she exits her husband's expensive car and enters her ex-husband's new house. She's wearing a pleated, white blouse, and a pastel lilac skirt that drapes to her ankles.

His teeth ache as he sketches branches with leaves the color of heart's blood.

Rust thinks of going back to the window and closing it.

He tries to close his ears instead.

***

Maggie dispenses with the pleasantries and gets to the point, "Marty, Ted doesn't want to meet you."

"Gathered that much by the phone call, Maggie, " Marty says, drying a tea glass and returning it to the cupboard.

She touches paint samples on the table, "What are these for?"

Marty points to the hall, "Corner office upstairs."

Maggie studies him, "I mean, what are you doing here?"

Marty's eyes shift to the fridge and back again, "I live here, is that what you mean?"

She crosses her arms, "Is this supposed to be some sort of face-saving motive to me and the girls?"

He sighs, and turns to the window, "I'm not trying to win anyone over, Maggie. I wanted space of my own. But you're welcome here, and the girls too, when you want to visit."

"I like my life now, Marty, " Maggie says, "You know, when we were married ---"

Marty held up a hand, "But we're not anymore. I know that."

Maggie steps to the counter, "So, you get everything sorted out now that it's no benefit to your family?"

Marty rounds on her, "Now listen. I don't know what you're thinking I'm getting out of having this house but it's not some grand gesture to make me look good, Maggie. There's nothing I can do that redeems me, and I'm tired of trying. I just wanted something solid that wasn't a shitty apartment."

"Solid? _SOLID_? You had a solid life and you ruined it, " Maggie says, in a tone that crackles Marty's teeth like tin foil.

Marty raises his hands in surrender, "You're right. I did. But who's keeping track of my penance for that? I don't get anything else? A second chance at something?"

"Not from me, " Maggie says, firmly.

"I wasn't askin' you, " Marty says.

Maggie backs off. She narrows her eyes at him as she pulls out her car keys, "You know what I see, when I look at this house, Marty? It's not a solid house. It's a sandcastle. It's not solid. Never will be."

Marty sinks onto a chair, his elbows on his knees, "Are you done?"

"I didn't come here to fight with you, Marty. Honest."

Marty nods, chewing his lower lip to quell the trembling.

He hears Maggie say sorry but doesn't see her leave.

Marty wonders if one day he'll burn his eyes out of his head with his tears.

***

Maggie climbs in her car. Rust feels her looking at him.

"Rust?" Maggie calls through her open window.

Rust closes his book, and sets it and his charcoal stick on the swing as he gets up.

He walks around her vehicle to the passenger door and leans on it when she rolls the window down, "What do you want?"

"Do you know what he's doing?"

Rust cuts his eyes to the kitchen window. He can't see Marty.

"Gettin' on with his life? Keepin' busy?"

"And you?"

"Oh, you don't really want to know about me, Maggie. You wanna know about Marty. You talked to him, what'd he say?"

"I talked to him about the house. I don't know what he expects to come of it."

Rust leans in the window, and his tone cuts glass, "I heard you both. And I'll tell you this for nothing -- you can come here and feel free as you please to kick Marty til he's dead. Because he'll let you, and you know that. Like some stray fuckin' dog. Marty'll let you kick at him because he thinks he deserves it. Question is, do you think that's what he deserves? Because you can leave, and go to your whole other life. Marty don't have that. He's got this one, whatever it is. And it's not for you to judge."

Maggie closes her eyes and when she opens them she says, "What about you?"

Rust puts a cigarette to his lips and flicks his lighter, "Oh, I've been kicked plenty. So I keep my distance from everybody." He snaps his lighter closed and takes a long drag, "But you already knew that."


	25. So much depends, upon a blue box of promise

  
Rust wipes his feet off before he trails into the kitchen. He sets his notebook, pen, and charcoal stick down on the table.

"You all right?" Rust asks, though he knows the answer. _Programming._

Marty, at the sink with his shirtsleeves rolled up, scrubs at a plate before chucking the dishcloth at the tap. "No, I'm not."

"You wanna talk?"

Marty dries his hands on a towel, drops the plate in the dishwasher rack, and tips the cloth back into the sink, "No, do you?"

"Just asking."

Marty steps back from the sink, and latches the dishwasher door shut. Marty turns a chair toward himself. He straddles it, resting his arms on the back, "I'm tired of trying."

Rust slides down the counter, against the cupboards, and settles onto the hardwood floor, "Tryin' what?"

"Changing."

Rust tilts his head, looks long at Marty and shrugs one shoulder, "It don't happen overnight. And people don't adjust overnight neither."

"What I mean is, " Marty extends his arms, "it's exhausting explaining how it's happening. I know it's happening, I know it's the real deal. I wasn't lookin' for a medal, or a blue ribbon at the fair, or anything. I didn't get this house for her goddamn approval."

Rust nods, "I know that, Marty."

"You're the only one who does!"

Rust goes quiet, and Marty's afraid he's pissed Rust off.

"You need more'n one person for that to be true?"

Marty cracks his knuckles, "No. But she's part of my life, and I was hoping -- and maybe that's the kicker -- for a little ceasefire where the past is concerned."

"Your past makes your future, Marty. Affects your present. It's not separate, not ever."

Marty pulls at the chair back til it creaks, and stands up, "You want anything in particular for dinner?"

Rust scratches at his jaw, "No."

Marty opens the fridge, "Chinese leftovers, it is then."

***

Rust picks his fried rice container clean. He dumps the box in the garbage and goes to Marty's bedroom.

Marty flips through interior layouts for his office and sits up when Rust takes the chair across from him at the table.

"This was empty this afternoon, " Rust says, holding up Marty's small blue gift box, "and yet, it's full." Rust pulls the lid off to show a plastic-wrapped pack of Camel Blues.

"Oh yeah, that." Marty rubs the back of his neck, ghosting a smile up at Rust, "Figured it's like that glass pessimists always see as empty. Now it's always full."

Rust taps the box on the table, and Marty sees the smile in his eyes that doesn't touch his face, "How about that..."

Marty pushes back from the table, "Uh, also got you somethin' else."

Rust puts a cigarette in his mouth, and doesn't light it. "Like what? What for?"

Marty goes over, down near the couch, and removes the blue craft store box like it's a bomb. Rust's gaze like heat lamps on his skin all the while.

"You don't have to keep it, you know...you...uh..." Marty flushes pink and doesn't look Rust in the face.

He puts the box on the table and steps back, fingers scrubbing down the sides of his arms."Just thought, you know, remembered that conversation..."

Rust's cigarette hangs from his mouth as he talks around it, "Wanna fill me in?"

"Was buyin' paint, " Marty says, "Got an idea. You said you thought you'd be a painter...you know."

Marty goes quiet, and a shade of reddish-purple Rust imagines tastes like rhubarb.

Rust takes the smoke from his mouth and tucks it back in the pack. Rust approaches the table as though the box is a suspect for interrogation. Marty notices Rust looking at him like that, sometimes.

"Got a ribbon."

"Same one as before, " Marty counters. His tone is lighter. Rust relaxes.

"Too big for a ring, " Rust ventures.

Marty looks up at him and there's a slow smile he admits he'd hang off of, "I got you shoes. For all the hippie wandering you're doin' in the yard."

Rust's mouth turns up at one corner, mirroring Marty's, "Shame I cut my hair..."

"Not really, " Marty says, "I think it looks better ---"

Marty shuts up when Rust looks at him.

"Uh, I like it, " Marty finishes, and rubs his hands against his forearms some more.

Rust brushes his fingers against the ribbon, and the edges on the box. Marty watches the way he pulls the bow free and looks at the floor, his neck flaming for reasons he won't say.

But if Rust asks him, Marty'll confess.

Rust tips the lid off the blue box and goes still.

***

Back in another life, Rust recalls a box like the one before him. It was smaller though, but the same polished wood. And when his wife opened it, a song played from within. Claire put her jewelry in a box set like this one. Same bronze corners, but the clasp is different. Claire's was tooled with a hummingbird, the beak as the joined clasp.

Pandora's Box, Rust thinks, but with a key. This one is locked, with a key. He turns it, and tilts the lid open.

As the myth goes, Pandora slammed the lid shut to keep Hope from escaping.

Rust feels the reverse is true. That what emanates from Marty's gift is Hope. Rust could leave the lid open and the feeling would remain. An ever-burning engine of possibility.

He looks over at Marty. The man's chewing his lip off. Rust sets the lid all the way back on its hinges and runs reverent fingers over the contents. The rich, sheened teak of the pallette attached under the lid flares the overhead light into a corona.

"There's, uh, drawers and things that fold out...uh, there's more," Marty says. Rust holds his gaze like every word is important.

Marty doesn't believe he's seen Rust enjoy anything. Cigarettes and cold beer aside.

Rust pulls open the first drawer, finding tubes of oil paint in every color. The very top has an array of oils, turpentines, mediums, and varnishes. He traces them like concert piano keys.

The second drawer holds pallette knives of several sizes, their caramel-tinged handles gleaming. Slim and fat paintbrushes, soft as eyelashes. The last drawer holds a large tube of white paint, several soft cloths, and two stainless steel mixing pots.

He shuts the drawers one by one, then the lid, and puts the brass key on top.

Marty looks ready to fall apart. Rust knows he can't refuse it, doesn't want to, but too much of him feels he doesn't deserve any of it. Not the space, not Marty's goodwill, not Marty.

Rust rubs the pads of his thumbs along the art chest, thinking all the while of possibilities. Rust walks the tightrope of Yes and No.

"Thank you, Marty."

Marty smiles and the world brightens with him.


	26. Confession

Maggie calls Marty the next afternoon.

Marty wedges the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he carries dropcloths upstairs.

"Marty, I didn't mean to --"

"Yeah, you did. Because you said it."

Marty wonders if he's taken that road Maggie's father eschewed in his later years. Marty's not rolling over and letting Maggie kick at him, but he's picking his battles. He doesn't want to be that angry old guy in the nice house who's a complete, raging asshole.

Part of him believes Maggie's resentment is due to his own non-reaction. He's not yelling, and he's not ignoring her either.

He fluffs out the dropcloths and the plastic sheeting in his chosen office space.

"What's that noise?"

"Plastic. For the floors, so I don't stain 'em."

"What are you doing?"

The filter between his brain and his mouth runs smooth now, and Marty filters out all the red flags he'd thrown up of old.

"Painting my sandcastle, Maggie."

Her silence isn't a victory. He's not keeping score.

"Don't apologize. I don't care. You don't want me callin', bothering Ted, that's fine. So, why did you call?"

The plastic under his feet crackles in protest as he shifts his weight from foot to foot.

"Was it ever enough?" Maggie says.

Marty clears his throat, and stands by the window overlooking the yard.

"It was more than enough, and I never noticed how much. Is this why you're callin'? So you can hear me tell you how bad I fucked up, and you can feel good about whatever's makin' you feel shitty? Y'know, you want your life and I'm not a part of that, and I get it, but you're still makin' yourself known whenever you feel like it. Is it 'cause I was phonin' you? I meant what I said, when I said thank you, you know. And yeah, you hadn't seen me in two years but did you ever pick up the phone? Like, I get my little square to walk and you get the rest of the world, and now you're passin' judgement 'cause I wanted a little more space than a dogtrot apartment?"

Marty's words burn like bile in his throat. The truth of it scalds him. Maggie's guilty as he is, of catering to an illusion of control. He squeezes the phone in his fist, somehow glad he's not meeting Ted. That he shouldn't try.

"I gotta go, " Marty mumbles, and hangs up.

***

Rust knows what waits beyond Marty's front yard. Beyond the trees and the hedges lurks the world. The bright colors marred with blue and black swirls. For every new birth, there is a sure death. He's newborn, somehow. Yet possessing all his former life's memories.

Small changes. Everything starts small. Even the universe.

Rust tilts his chin until his eyes find the corner window. He scrubs his heels in the grass as he darkens lines in his book. Change occurs every second. His old life tugs at him. The ease of drunkeness. The rote action of it. Slip back into the quicksand of old habits.

Rust shades in the curve of tricycle handbars.

The cost of true change is everything. You must pay everything. That is your cost.

Change without focus is habit.

Violence. Degradation. Old habits.

Rust adds windblown tassels to the handlebars on the page.

He likes thinking he bled those habits out on a dirt floor.

Rust glances up and sees Marty crossing the grass toward him.

"Nearly done that book, I see, " Marty says.

Rust tucks his pencil inside the book and snaps the elastic shut.

"Last page," he says, squinting up at Marty.

"You wanna help me paint my sandcastle?"

Rust takes Marty's hand and pulls himself up from the grass, "Sure."

***

Rust agrees he'll do the accent wall. Marty says he should because he pronounces the damn color right.

Marty brings tea pitchers and ice upstairs, and Rust never thinks of beer. Not enough to ask, anyhow.

When the plastic crinkling wears Rust's last nerve, Marty brings in his laptop and pulls up satellite radio.

He doesn't miss the curl in Rust's lip at the sound of Garth Brooks.

"What's wrong with Garth Brooks?" Marty says.

Rust turns toward him, "I don't like his sound."

"Well, " Marty makes a sweeping gesture to the computer, "Pick a damn station. You worked in bars, you tellin' me you ain't never heard some Garth Brooks?"

Rust settles on a classic rock channel, and Marty says, "'Cause no one's ever heard George Thorogood in a bar before. Real nice."

Rust takes his cut-in paintbrush in hand like he's primed to craft a fresco on Marty's office wall, "Bar music's the same wherever you go, save for the little differences."

Marty moves his tray of wrought-iron gray over to the window-wall, "How's that?"

Rust starts in on the corners, careful of the painter's tape, "Country music falls into specifics in bars. Take the Longhorn, for example. It's what you'd expect -- it's twangy, some square-dancin', hay and peanut shells on the floor kinda deal. Get enough beer in someone, any song sounds good."

Marty snorts, "Except for you."

"Bar music's nothin' you can dance to, 'cause it ain't the purpose. You want somethin' loud enough to drown out the other assholes while you're drinkin'. Point of fact, no one wants to hear himself think while he's gettin' drunk."

Marty daubs his own cut-in brush in the gray paint, "Except for you. Talkin' about dancin' while you're spinnin' people like they're teacups at a county fair."

Rust slides his brush along the edges, "True. What'd you do when you were drinkin'?"

Marty dabs a corner, "Fucked up beyond repair."

Rust hmms as he side-steps, following his brush.

"Why'd you call it a sandcastle?"

Marty twists the brush handle between his hands, "Because it's what Maggie called it."

"You can't paint a sandcastle, Marty, " Rust says. He thumps his knuckles against the eggshell wall.

"No, " Marty says, nodding a little, "You can't."

"So, " Marty continues, "bar music. What's Alaska like?"

Rust sets his brush crossways on his tray of Azores Blue and ticks off his fingers, "George Thorogood, Trooper, Kansas, Foreigner, Creedence, Buffalo Springfield, and ZZ Top."

"And what's different?"

"The bars I worked, I changed out the jukebox."

Marty smiles, "What'd you take out?"

Rust says, "The seven I mentioned. And anything country."

"And you call yourself a Texan, " Marty says.

"Drunkards are citizens of the world, Marty, " Rust says.

Marty's face falls until Rust picks his brush back up, "That's _Casablanca_."

"Thought you didn't watch T.V."

"Watched yours enough, back in the day, "

***

They break for lunch when Marty asks about the ledger.

"I might've asked you this back then, but where'd the book come from?"

Rust crumples a napkin and tosses it onto his plate, "North Shore, after Port Houston, and things got...funny while I was dryin' out.  
Now, you gotta appreciate the delicacy of the human mind once its been flash-fried in a narcotic glaze. Anything afterward is gonna feel unreal."

Marty says, "So, comin' down off your Narco stint...?"

Rust makes an exploding gesture from his ears, "Up is down, black is white, that kinda shit."

Marty nods, "So...?"

"And I wasn't fuckin' talkin' to anyone, so I started drawin', and scribbling shit down. When my four week comped vacation was up, I just never quit it. The writing. Helped me make sense of what I thought I was seeing. No one else knew what I saw, except other druggies. Like how it's not crazy if everyone sees what you're babbling about? Wasn't drug insanity, but it was like the DT's mixed with permanent damage. Navigating what I thought was real and what was reality...well, that's an uphill climb. And when they let me work Homicide, I knew I'd need a bigger book. More details."

"What about the other one?" Marty says. "The one you've been drawin' in?"

Rust nudges at his plate edge with the tip of a forefinger, "That's somethin' else."

Marty doesn't brace him. He collects their plates and puts them into the sink.

From the table, Rust sees the nail in the road.

***

When the last page is done, Rust tucks the book in the shelf Marty lent him.

Marty's upstairs, ventilating the painted office. Rust finished his wall, cleaned up and went back to his notebook.  
  
Marty brings him tea, and crouches near the bookshelf, "If I wanted to read one of your books, where'd I start?"

Rust's nail in the road drags itself across his ribs. He drinks some tea and leans forward, pulling _Desolation Angels_ out with a hooked finger, "That one."

Marty stands up and turns the book in his hands, "Part of a series?"

Rust shakes his head, "Near the end of Kerouac's life, when he wrote it."

"Hmmm. Is it depressing?"

Rust looks up at Marty with dawning knowledge that Marty knows, somehow.

He knows.

"Depends on how you look at it."

Marty chews at his lip and pulls the envelope free from between the pages, "Your bookmark."

Rust doesn't break eye contact, "That was for you."

Marty flips the envelope over, "Was for me? Not anymore?"

"Depends on how you look at it."

Marty sets the book down and tears open the envelope. He unfolds the single sheet of paper while Rust sets his tea glass down and goes to the front door.

Rust's fingers find the handle when Marty says, "The fuck am I looking at here?"

Rust turns.

"What's it look like, Marty?"

"Declaration of estate. Seen enough of 'em."

"What's that tell you?"

Marty crumples the page in his fist. Standing up takes all his energy.

"This is dated twenty-ten, Rust. Did you...did you fucking write this when you came back?"

Rust nods, "Updated it."

Marty sinks into Rust's vacated chair, "So that shit about tying off and closin' out, that's what this is?"

"Mhhmm."

Marty laughs, a sound between a sob and a snicker, "So, where's the will?"

Rust points at the bookshelf and Marty's color runs out of his face like sand through fingers.

"Bullshit."

"It's not bullshit, Marty. It's right there."

"Are you tellin' me, what while you've been...here...you've been..." Marty sags forward, dropping the paper.

"I think you should read that journal, Marty. You'd get all your answers."

"No, " Marty says, hissing breath through his teeth, "I ain't readin' your fuckin' hundred page suicide note."

"It's not a cursed painting, Marty. I'm not gonna shrivel and die when you look at it."

Marty pulls himself up, and Rust notes the shakiness he moves with.

"No, " Marty says, his eyes watery and staring.

Rust glances around. Takes in the house, Marty, the yard, and the peace, and breathes out slow.

It's near enough a repeat of the storage locker.

The sounds Marty makes echo in his head. The videotape, his solid proof. What swayed Marty to help.

Now he's done it again, with the journal. And Marty lets out the same noise. The same strangled curse.

"I didn't do this to hurt you, Marty. I need you to understand..." Rust says, "So you have to look at it. Because I can't tell you."

Marty sits on the floor, his legs like broken puppet pins. He reaches over to the shelf and takes Rust's black journal in his hands.

"I'll be outside, " Rust says, palming cigarettes from his shirt pocket, as he drifts out the door into the approaching dusk.

Marty wipes at his face, and watches the screen door swing slow like a pendulum.

 _Maggie was right_ , he thinks. _I've built a sandcastle, and the tide that takes it will come from my eyes._

He fumbles the book open. Breathes tight through his teeth like he's pulling splinters from his flesh.

The first two pages are sheer ivory, and blank.

Marty turns the third one and finds words written in Rust's careful, slanted hand,

 **OM - Together, may it protect us two.**  
**Together may it profit us two.**  
**Together we may do a hero's work.**  
**May we learn intelligently ;**  
**May we never hate one another.**  
  
**OM - peace, peace, peace.**

**(Katha Upanisad)**

  
Marty's breath leaves him in a hammer-blow as he turns the next page.

  
Soft, careful colors and steady lines define the bowing curve of a beaten lawnchair, the seated figure  
haloed in cheap, stark lighting. Marty knows what he's looking at. He knows the when of what he sees, sure as he knows  
Rust Cohle never owned a camera except for canvassing cases.

It's clearer than any Polaroid ; sharper than any blade because it is memory.

Marty, in one of Rust's chairs, poking his fingers into the worn, smoky constellation of bullet holes in Rust's jacket.

Marty, curved in and thoughtful, his face free of lines and judgement. Marty as Rust saw him.

The entire sketch is Marty, to the life.


	27. Horizon

  
Rust stares into the softening dusk from his place on the swing. The ropes creak while the branch holding them is silent. Marty's door isn't shut. Rust doubts Marty's moved since he walked out here. The scent of the oily rope at his cheek stirs a memory of Alaska, two-thousand-and-ten.

Ben Hashy, the new guy in an endless loop of new people. The man was all of thirty-two, and he had that Mid-West corn-fed look about him. Talked about his wife and kids, and how he's on the boat for them. Like it was a cruise liner instead of a crab trawler.

Rust's eighth season on the boats, where he's playing brinkmanship games with Death. Need a guy to fix your lines? Ask Cohle. Walk the decks on extra shifts? Ask Cohle. Hate the rain, and can't keep your feet to pull a trap up near the edge? Ask Cohle.

Rust didn't drink on the boats. Guys snuck liquor and pot on board and got caught. Not like the shit ever did its job. Guys puking over the rails 'cause straight liquor on a steady diet of shitty food topped off with a joint meant nothin' but trouble. No one relaxes on these boat trips. It ain't bass fishin' with your asshole father-in-law, that's for sure.

Ben latched onto Rust from the get-go. Rust was civil with everyone on board. No place for tensions in a place rife with them.

When they left the dark ridge of coastline behind and there was nothing but black water scattered with moonlight, the atmosphere on the boat changed.

Rust didn't.

Ben drew second watch with Rust on his other side. Ben at port and Rust at starboard.

Rust scrubs his hand along the swing-rope, stares at Marty's front door and remembers how Ben screamed.

Ben forgot to watch his hands while checking the lines. Always keep them level and don't reach for anything.

Rust heard the screaming and called for the lights. He found Ben on the port side, his wrist clamped off by a crab line, like a fox in a leg trap.

The rope secured Ben to the port side by his wrist, cutting into his flesh. When the boat leaned port-side in the swells, Ben mewled and shrieked, and waited for his wrist to come apart.

Rust braced his left shoulder against Ben and took out his knife. He saw Ben's eyes and heard the stricken whisper, "Don't take my hand off. The rope. The rope."

Rust said, "I ain't takin' your hand off. Stay still."

He sawed at the salt-swollen rope while men shouted above-deck to _watch them, fucking watch for that shit_ , and heard Ben's strangled gasping and pleading to _not here not here I don't want to die here not here oh god not here._

They lost the trap to the waves and Ben kept his hand. Rust remembers the fat, tentacle of rope snaking off the side into the water, and why didn't he grab it and hang on?

The guys call Rust a hero, and the captain gives him hot Scotch as a thank you. Rust gives it to Ben, says he needs it more.

When Ben's wrist heals, rope burn-scar a reminder, he's cautious on the deck. Keeps his hands close to himself.

Rust moves the same as always, with the swells and the ship, with none of Ben's caution.

Death doesn't come for those who seek it, but those who ignore it.

Four weeks later, they make landfall back in Juneau. Rust's watching the sun come up from behind an unlit Coors sign when he hears CNN announce the name of Louisiana's new state senator.

Rust cleans out his four bare walls and a roof into his truck, and spends the next fifty hours driving to Houston, Texas.

When he crosses the state border into Louisiana, his knuckles tighten on the wheel and he lights a smoke.

***

Marty steps heavy outside. His hands empty, and his chest tight. The skin around his eyes is damp and stinging. He settles on the grass next to the swing. The creaking of the rope makes him touch his neck, touch his wrists. Marty thinks of Stephanie Kordish at Lake Charles, suspended like a trophy on lashed, knotted lines.

He wonders if Rust thought of hanging himself, and his breath whistles high in his throat.

"You didn't read all of it."

Rust's bent knee is in his peripheral, making the ropes creak as he moves.

"No, " Marty says, "I did not."

Rust's lighter flicks bright, and his hand passes Marty a cigarette. Marty takes it. It's from Rust, and he'll never refuse.

"It's not a real will, " Marty says, "No legal grounds."

"I don't have anything, Marty. Couple books, and a truck with a busted light. Wasn't leavin' you that."

Marty drops his head and presses the side of his hand to his face. He stares at the orange ember of his cigarette, "Thought you didn't have it in you to kill yourself."

"Despite my low constitution for the broader strokes of suicide - a bullet, pills, a rope - it didn't stop me from drinking every day nor challenging the twenty-five percent casualty rate of Juneau's finest crab trawlers."

Marty drags on his smoke at that, "So, why come back?"

"Things I needed to see to. What we had to finish."

Marty exhales a stream of smoke.

Rust continues, "I don't have anything, Marty. All I got are memories and a good lot of them are things I'd rather forget. I kept that book because I needed to. Anything happened to me, I knew you'd find out."

"Why?"

"Workin' Homicide means we meet people's families on the worst fuckin' day of their life. And you know what I took away from that? I know I didn't have a case if I didn't have a body, but talkin' to people about that body makes me aware that to me, it's a body. To someone else, it's someone they loved. And before I got to any questions about strange people they'd known, or bad habits, their relatives break down and tell me there's so much I wanted to say that I never did. Never had the chance and never will."

Marty thumbs ash off his pant leg, and smokes.

"So that book is what I wanted to say. But the thing is, there's never time to say it all. Not in a conversation. That's why you had to read it. Not all at once, that's not possible..."

Marty halts Rust's swinging with a hand on the rope, and stubs his cigarette out against the side of the wooden swing.

Rust thinks he wouldn't be surprised had Marty ground that smoke out on his arm.

Marty hands the cigarette back to Rust.

"You came back to finish everything, huh? Yourself included? That why you pulled the knife out?"

"I guess, " Rust says, recalling what he knows of how to handle stabbings. Don't pull the object out. It fills the void it makes.

"I guess I wanted to see what was next."

"Just tell me you wanted to die, Rust. Say it."

Rust turns his head and looks at Marty's darkening profile, " I did. I wanted it to end. Every time I went on those crab boats, that book sat in a post office box. When I came back ashore, I took it out and added to it. If the day came where I didn't make it back, then that book'd find its way to you."

Rust hears Marty's noisy exhale, "I looked for you, you know. On the internet. Wasn't nothin' to see."

"Found you on there," Rust says, "Three things ; the day you retired from C.I.D, that meth-lab-murder-house where you said you found the baby, that made the wire. Last one was smaller, when you opened your investigative firm. Knew you were out there, Marty."

There are poems in Rust's book. Marty didn't know if Rust wrote them or copied them from things he'd read, but there are poems in those pages that are about Marty. Lines and lines of words that paint pictures for Marty that he'd dreamed of and kept secret. There was never anyone he could tell, and he'd only tell Rust.

  
"When I started roundin' up evidence on the Tuttles, I knew I'd have to get to you somehow. Didn't feel right not havin' you there. And then State pulls me in when I'm squaring up the Lake Charles thing and I knew it, sure as shit while I'm talking to those jerks, they were gonna pull you next. I red-flagged somebody comin' back here, and they circled the fuckin' wagons for sure."

Marty shifts on the grass, turns and sits cross-legged, facing Rust, "If I didn't help you, what were you gonna do?"

"Would've taken me longer to find what I needed, shit it'd been nigh fuckin' impossible after State P.D's little shitshow. Probably would have ended up a mysterious casualty of death-by-misadventure. Either my own hand or some branch of Billy Lee's fuckin' psycho-circus family. Point is, Marty, if you didn't help me I wouldn't be sittin' here with you now."

Marty sniffles, doesn't try to hide the sound, "Why show me that goddamn book if you're not...gonna...you know...go."

"I told you, you should've read all of it."

Marty braces his arms behind him and leans back, looking upward through branches and dark leaves, "You got any of those stories you talked about? The star ones?"

Rust scratches at his neck and taps at his knee, feeling choice and inevitability coalesce.

"I tell you this one, you promise you're gonna read the rest?"

Marty nods, "Yeah. I'll read it. I will."

Rust finishes his cigarette and stubs it out on the patch of clay at his feet.

"When humankind was young, the gods ignored their pleas. Man plead for knowledge, and understanding of his world. People toiled not knowing why. The why was their great plague. The desire to know is an affliction, contagious in consciousness.

One day, a young hunter decided there was a greater catch than any four-footed beast. Any one of his brethren could hunt for food. This foolish hunter sets his sight on the sun. He followed it without ceasing, across rivers and forests, losing it at nightfall and wondering why.

His brethren shun him. No one chases the sun. Can't catch it. Can't eat it. Can't wear it. He's a fool.

He chases the sun up a mountain, and slips on the way down. He breaks all his bones, and the gods heal him.

The hunter asks the gods why are there many lights at night, but a single one in the day. The gods answer, _because the stars are cold and far away. And they nourish dreams, not life._

The hunter swears he'll catch the sun. He follows it to the sea and jumps in, swimming to the horizon. He drowns at sunset. The gods mourn him, and man dies but one death.

They reward him for his devotion. For his _loyalty_. Any place in the sky is his. The moon says _come stay by me, and you'll have all the stars._

The hunter declines, and asks to be put back on the earth near the top.

Far enough north, the land's called the Home of the Midnight Sun. It's bright, and colorful, and dark.

The hunter chases nothing from then on. The gods make him the Aurora Borealis, and he paints the skies close to the sun."

 

Marty's quiet until Rust catches a gravelly sob, "That's not a star story."

Rust sits down beside Marty on the grass, and puts an arm around him, "It is. It's the oldest."

Marty's arms come around him, and Rust leans into him, "I pulled that knife out because I knew that fucker was dead. Knew help was on the way. You wouldn't be down there alone for long."

Marty cries. He pulls at Rust's shirt and shakes.

"Takes a long time to bleed to death. Knew I'd be stickin' around til they found you. I wasn't leavin' right away."

Rust frames Marty's face with his hands, and his thumbs run soft against Marty's closed eyelids.

"Goddamn you, Martin. You held on too fuckin' tight, " Rust says.

Marty hiccups as Rust whispers, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

Marty tastes like sunlight and salt-water.

He tastes like the horizon.


	28. Absence

  
Three months. Ninety days. Life shakes Marty out of his ignorant funk three months after Rust quit.

Marty sought refuge at work from the glacial reception Maggie gave him every time he was home. Audrey was nonchalant around him, her eyes screaming that she knows what kind of man her father is. Macie was polite and apologetic, always with somewhere else to be. Her eyes telling him _gee where did I get that from?_

Looking at Maggie took every ounce of strength he had. And soon he buckles. Grabs his keys and his wallet and leaves without a word.

There's nothing to say. Seventeen years of marriage, and it strangles itself in the Hart's kitchen on a rope twined of deceit and selfishness.

Marty stays at Beth's during the nights, and goes to work in the mornings. He goes to the house to change clothes, and slumps against the washing machine for two hours. The spin cycle wakes him, and he hears Maggie in the kitchen talking to Macie and Audrey. He doesn't hear his name, or any variation of _your father_. He doesn't exist in this house. In their lives. Marty was wrapped up in his double lives that he never paid any mind to his family's single one. He'd wanted to be somewhere else, doing something else, being someone else rather than the mask of Martin Hart, family man.

The washing machine blats at him, and the noise rips up his jaw and pinballs in his skull. It sounds like a failure buzzer on a game show. _This Is Your Life. Except it's not. You didn't want it._

Marty puts his clothes in the dryer and hears silence from the kitchen. Three sets of footsteps depart. One out the front door, and two upstairs.

He sits at the dining room table and listens to the rumble of the dryer and the fist-thump of his heartbeat.

He's got everything he wanted. And he can't stand it.

***

Beth visits him at work, at the straggling end of his ignorance. Kathleen directs her to Marty's desk, and Marty doesn't stand up or pull at his tie, or preen at all. He stops himself from saying _Don't fucking sit there_ when she seats herself in Rust's vacant chair.

Steve Geraci gives Beth a wolfish, leering look that wouldn't seem out of place in the old Warner Brothers cartoons. Marty waits for the howl, for the footstomping, for the chorus of rum-soaked platitudes that fall out of even Marty's mouth when he drinks.

"Like your new partner, Hart. Lot of improvement from the last one. Nicer to look at."

Beth smiles, and turns to look at Steve. She smiles at him and turns back to Marty. Steve winks at Marty, and Marty rolls his eyes.

"What're you doin' here?" Marty says.

Beth moves the chair side to side, squeaking it the way he remembers her bedsprings doing, and winks at him.

"Am I gonna see you tonight?" Beth says.  
  
Marty answers into his coffee cup, "Do you even want to, or are you bored?"

"Of course I want to see you, " Beth says, "I miss you when you're gone."

Marty clears his throat, puts down his cup and tries for a mega-watt smile, "Well in that case, I'll see you tonight."

Beth leaves. Every pair of eyes, save for Marty's and Kathleen's, watch her go. The mutterings around Marty change. Marty and Rust were fighting over Beth, or some fucked up thing. He doesn't think to correct them. Let the hens hen-peck.

Marty spends the rest of his afternoon filling in blank spaces on paperwork. He tells himself he's got everything he wants.

The empty chair across from him knows the truth, but that's nothing new.

Steve and Marty go for drinks a few times. Geraci orbits him like an cratered moon of rum, adipose tissue, cheap cologne and glassy misery. Steve talks to him more since Rust left and Beth showed up. Geraci is a newsfeed of how much _Cohle was a ratfuck kinda fag_ and how much he'd like to drill Beth _if you're done with her and all, Marty._

Rust isn't gone, much as Marty wants to believe. He's there in the empty spaces. The absent ashtray. The silent chair. The bare expanse of his desk. Salter brings up how Marty's desk _looks like a hungover filing cabinet, and why don't you just use the other one for all the extra shit?_

The files on Marty's desk rise higher, and the other desk sits bare.

Marty piles his things in the backseat of his car. The passenger seat is empty. He can't bring himself to put anything there, and he never dwells on the why of it.

Marty caught himself more than once bringing two mugs to his desk instead of one. No one notices.

He pours the second cup down the sink in the break room every time.

***

Marty moves out of his house. He signs divorce papers. He stops seeing Beth.

He stops a lot of things.

Marty stops smiling. Forgets what happiness feels like, if he'd ever felt the true thing at all.

Marty goes to work. Fills all the voids in his life with murder cases, the ending and stalling of other people's lives, the machine-gun rattle of office typewriters, and the hungover ramblings of people he finds he wouldn't trust with his wallet let alone his life.

Salter never asks him why he doesn't get another partner. Oh sure, rookies get cycled through because Marty's a good cop, and a great detective. _Just don't ever ask him for life advice ; guy's a trainwreck._

When Marty sees the tweaker den in oh-six, and the officers crowd away from the microwave, his guts coil into cold lead, and his tongue feels coated in metal shavings. He smells mulch, red phosphorus, and the musty reek of the Ledoux cooksite. He wonders what aluminum and ash tastes like. Something chalky that cuts up his mouth and chokes him.

Marty opens the microwave and goes back in his head to the clanking of the doorhandle that revealed two children : one dead boy, and one catatonic girl.

He closes the microwave and hears nothing from either side of him. No sharp sniff, no scratching of pen to paper, and no dry intonation about the goodness of people or the sanctity of human life. Marty reminds himself there was no comfort in Rust's commentary, and forgets to lie to himself while he thinks that. There's no comfort in truth, but it's solid.

He's tired of looking at ruins. At everything crumbling and dying. The casualties of selfishness, of neglect, of greed.

Marty walks out of the tweaker den, past his rookie tag-along puking in the gravel, and gets in his car.

He drafts his resignation letter to Salter. Cites one case too many. That he can't look anymore.

Salter opens the file, and gets to the photos. He closes the folder and pulls out bourbon and two glasses.

They toast, and drink in silence. They don't trade platitudes. The bourbon's top-shelf.

Kathleen sits in Rust's chair as Marty packs his desk. She cradles her face in her hands, her elbows a pedestal.

"Marty..."

"Yeah?" Marty says.

"You held on, " she says, which is more than anyone's told him beyond _hell of a job, you know, that Lange case._

Marty puts his coffee mug in the box, and grasps the handles. He's had all the back-slapping bullshit he can stand.

He's not a good man. He's not thorough, or steady, or committed. He's a mess. And he did it all to himself. What's more is he heaped his misery onto others. His daughters, his wife, his girlfriends, and Rust.

Kathleen walks with him to his car. Marty takes his time, because she's telling him how much she likes him. And he needs someone to lie to him, because the solid truth is the Acme anvil that crushes that bastard coyote in the cartoons.

He remembers the red veil across his vision when he saw Rust in this very lot. That he's never known self-loathing and betrayal until it showed up with its hands raised and a tired truth.

Rust held back. He had to have held back.  
  
Marty puts his box in the trunk and Kathleen puts her hand on his arm, "Marty...for what it's worth, you did good. Better than most. Lots of guys, it's just a job, but you, you know...you...had what they don't."

Kathleen's right.

He'd had Rust.

_I'm the only one ever took up for you. **Ever.**_

_Without me, there is no you._

But he didn't. Salter suspended Rust, and Marty sat there and returned the obscene gesture Rust gave him.

He didn't back Rust at all. Wrote him off. Everything was gibberish, and he just needed to get laid. _And cut the attitude, you're pissin' me off._

Marty was a great detective, but Rust was better.

In a lot of ways, Rust was better.

" I know, " Marty says.

"What's that, hon?" Kathleen says.

"I had what they don't."

Kathleen kisses his cheek, "Take care of yourself, Marty. Go fishing. Be happy."

Marty laughs, a soft, scratchy feeling in his throat, "I don't think I ever learned how to do that, Kath."

"What, fish?" Kathleen says, her eyes humouring him.

"Be happy, " Marty says, simply, "Take care of myself. Always had you for that. And other people too."

Kathleen hugs him, where there's no one to watch Marty crumble a little. Marty hugs her back, holds her tight and makes her giggle.

"I had you, honey, " Marty says. "Was more than enough, but I always looked elsewhere."

"You're human, Marty. You live, you learn."

"What if you just make the same mistake over and over?"

Kathleen steps back and rubs her hands down his shirtsleeves, "Then you need someone to kick your ass and tell you what's what."

Marty coughs, "I had that. Didn't listen."

Marty gets in his car and rolls down his window as Kathleen walks back to the C.I.D. She doesn't give him her back, and watches him all the while. He drives up to her and she leans in the window to kiss his cheek.

"Hey Kathleen?"

"Yeah, Marty?"

"You think forgiveness is a real thing? That you can ever really say sorry when you've fucked up?"

"I do. But it ain't words, Marty. It's what you do. It's what you do."

***

Rust kisses him. Rust is kissing him. The press of his mouth to Marty's, then against the corner of his lips. His cheeks. His jaw.

Marty's breath pulls in like he's surfacing from black water. Rust's hands fold over his, and Marty quivers with the knowledge that it was Rust in the dark, holding his hand while Marty dreamed of branches, and suffocation, and loss.

Rust, listening to Marty breathe like he's just learning how. Rust, with his forehead pressed to Marty's shoulder, his hands wide in the dip of Marty's spine. Rust's fingers soothing against his knuckles, brushing skin once split by his own cheekbone. The body heals, and the rest takes forever.

Marty startles at the shrill whistling of fireworks lifting into the sky. The rockets rattle and pop, and kids are laughing and yelling  _the red ones next, then the blue ones!_

Rust brushes his fingers at the nape of Marty's neck, Marty hugs him closer.

"Kids," Rust murmurs, "Before you got out here.Trying to be all secretive and shit. Hard to keep a secret where everyone'll see it."

Marty doesn't know if Rust means what they're doing or if it's the fireworks, or both. All the years gone by, Marty lands on **_both_** as his answer to everything Rust says. It is and it isn't. It's one thing and another.

Marty puts his hand, gentle as a starling's wing, against Rust's belly and presses firm. He kisses Rust back, hands steady at his front and the base of his spine. Marty's hands hold Rust together while Rust's mouth takes Marty apart.

"I heard you, you know, " Rust says, as Marty breathes fire out of his lungs and sunspots from his eyes, "I heard you when it was dark, and then it was bright."

Marty looks at him, breathless with understanding and lets Rust curl into him on the grass.

The kids down the block laugh in the still night, as they light off the next flares, blue comet trails in the starless dark.  The phosphorescent gleam lighting everything in blue - Rust above him, backlit in azure.

"We're here, " Rust says, soft in Marty's ear. "We're down here."


	29. Close

 

The first lesson life taught Rustin Cohle was attachment is fleeting. Attachment is like morning dew, and autumn frost. In the bright light of day, dew and frost disappear.

Rust understood responsibility early on, as his Pop never let up on him. His mother instilled neither quality -- it's hard to learn anything from an absent parent except that they're not around you, and can't find a good enough reason to be.

Rust learns that he is his sole responsibility, and that attachments complicate that. He fosters grudging understanding for his father, because Travis Cohle went to Vietnam and came home with the war in his head. The reality Travis inhabits doesn't touch Rust.

Because Rust doesn't know yet, what it's like to fight himself. Rust knows nothing yet of locked rooms, figurative and literal.

Rust mentions the colours he tastes and feels once, to Travis. Travis looks at Rust from then on through a haze of alcohol and suspicion, cogs creaking in his head that his boy isn't right. The chasm between Rust and Travis lengthens to light years.

Pragmatism, though he hasn't quite learned the word, becomes Rust's code. This'll change, as things are wont to do, down the road.

Rust learns to communicate with Travis through actions. Travis understood doing more than talking. Talkers lie. But those who act are honest, because actions change people.

Travis tells Rust there's no goddamn use for wandering around at night, staring at the sky like a loon. Rust stands mute on the things he's seen his father do when the sky goes dark. The sullen rages. Travis curses people Rust doesn't know. Rust never asks, and Travis will never tell him.

_Talkin' don't fix shit, boy. It just gets in the way._

In the dark, Travis speaks to people Rust can't see. And it doesn't bother Rust. He hasn't met anyone who sees and feels notes and colours like he does. And that doesn't bother Rust either, because he doesn't tell anyone.

Before Rust leaves for Texas, Travis tells Rust that he has no loyalty. _No son of mine would leave because he can't stand bein' cold. Like hating the ocean 'cause it's wet._

Rust lets his Army-grade duffel bag slide off his shoulder as he tells Travis that loyalty is attachment, not responsibility.

They don't speak again.

***  
  
Rust's observational skills grow as he moves through the world. He learns ways to blend in. In Paris, The City of Light, his uniform attracts attention. Once he scores a bottle of cheap wine, all passers-by ignore the man in the pressed-yet-wrinkling-shirt getting drunk in view of the Notre Dame. Once people quit looking at him, he's free to watch as he pleases.

He wanders to Pere LaChaise Cemetery, and figures to get dead-drunk with good company like Oscar Wilde and Marcel Proust. He goes looking for Sartre, and finds Sartre is buried at Montparnasse Cemetery.

He follows colorful graffiti like neon trails. Beer cans, liquor bottles like bread crumbs until Rust hears music that coils around him like a starlight kundalini. Five teens, three girls and two boys, smoking weed and laughing. They exclaim to each other in French, and Rust catches " _le soldat perdu"_ and they nod like superpowers achieving an axis. There's something about him, he sees, but he's drunk on the wine and the song, and wants to sit and think of nothing.

Rust toasts the defaced marble bust of one James Douglas Morrison, and listens to a dead, dark star sing while people play grab-ass and laugh among the silence, and carved stone slabs.

He drifts and dreams while the dead man's voice tells the night sky _this is the end_.

***

Love is not loyalty, but a close kin. When Rust learns Claire is pregnant, he feels obligation and duty like a drumbeat. When he sees Sofia's wide, open eyes, the universe unfolds a little further inside his head. The world turns under his feet, and Rust believes everything Travis ever told him was a lie. That Travis knew little of the world except for his dank, drunken corner after Vietnam.

One sunny afternoon and a bend in a Texas road teaches Rust that Travis was right.

He thought at one time there was nothing but possibility for himself, and Claire, and Sofia. With Sofia gone, Claire left too. Rust let Claire go and held onto his daughter. No sense in asking Claire to stay when she couldn't look him in the face, and every time he saw her, she felt like a stranger.

He leaves Robbery and joins Narcotics. Rust signs up for his eternal war, his own Vietnam, with an eightball and a nine-millimeter. He throws himself into the inferno and what stalks out of the ruins is Crash.

Crash is a noun and verb. An action and a thing. Another word for failure and loss. Crash isn't a name for a person.

Rust Cohle had some roots; fine, blown glass tendrils that connected him to the world. Once those were smashed and gone, Rust went away. Crash bottled him like single-malt and locked him away. Crash drinks from that particular bottle when the coke wears off. Short sips of bitterness that whet Crash's sickle-smile to a sharper edge.

Crash doesn't care. He lives in lifespans of ninety-seconds, no more and no less. Crash has tattoos. Rust never had any.

Nobody fucks with Crash, who fucks with everybody. The lesson that nothing is stable, ever. Crash is the fragility and the frailty of human life.

Crash is futility, and soon when he's in deep with reflections of himself, and futility is the truth.

Ginger hangs around him because Ginger likes him. Crash doesn't like anyone, himself most of all. But Ginger's his in, and even then, Crash gets all the space he needs.

Port Houston happens and Crash goes away. Put down by three bullets like a foaming mongrel.

Rust wakes up in Lubbock, Texas. He's strapped to a bed and bleeding out Crash like a poison. Rust yells and screams as he's torn in two pieces. Three. Four. He shatters like lead crystal and stops thinking.

Rust says ten words in four months. The rest of the time, he's in his head. Rust communicates by doing. He shrugs, he moves his eyes. He moves slow.

Crash had no use for slow.

Rust writes all the time.

Crash's handwriting came at the serrated edge of knives.

Rust establishes enough trust to be granted a pen.

Four months and the black-bag-hush-hush of you were never here, and he's shipped off to Louisiana.

_Give me Homicide. Because you owe me. **You owe me** , and I'm collecting. Just make sure where I go ain't cold._

As the swamp of Louisiana slides by his car window, Rust thinks of Sartre. Hell is other people.

Rust meets Martin Hart, and the world turns under Rust's feet once more.

***

Marty touches him like no one ever has. Travis touched him with sharp words, and blunt shoves. Travis hated to touch him.  
Claire touched him until Sofia passed. Crash touched no one. Maggie Hart flayed Rust Cohle with a skill Crash attributed to chairs and rolls of duct tape. Marty Hart touched him near the end with his knuckles. Battered at him like a hundred hurricanes.

Marty's handshake scorched him, like the burning bars he'd seen on the Robbery squad. Seven-hundred degrees and hotter, melting through any lock like knives through butter.

Marty burns through every door Rust locked shut. The one in Rust's head swings wide, the day he meets Marty again. Light floods the corners, and nothing hides from it. Rust lets Marty into the storage unit. That small corner of his private war. Marty asks all the right fucking questions. Marty asks what can he do to help.

Until Marty, no one ever helped him. He didn't see the need to ask.

Rust knows Marty looks at him in ways no one ever has. Rust wouldn't let anyone close enough. Attachment is useless.

But nothing exists in a vacuum. Rust let go, down in Carcosa. Marty held on. Marty held tight.

Marty holds tight to him now, in the grass, touches his face. Marty touches him like Rust remembers this blind fellow at North Shore touching people. Palm spread wide and fingertips down his eyelids and cheekbones. Geoffrey, Rust recalls, the guy's name was.

Geoffrey told Rust that's how he saw people. _I touch 'em, and my brain paints pictures._

Rust believed Geoffrey before. Moreso now, here with Marty.

_I was gonna play baseball, ride bulls. You know, you end up becoming something you never intended. Uh, I guess you never really even know why._

Marty leans into him, his kisses like tasting something rich and smooth. Marty touches Rust and Rust touches him back and there's color, and light, and flavor.

Love is not attachment.

Love is change.

Rust feels alive, and he knows exactly why.


	30. Still

  
Marty doesn't know what time it is. Part of him doesn't care.

The yard is full-dark, and he's not afraid. Fear comes easier now in the dark, Marty feels. Before, always before, he put his foot on its throat and snarled back in defiance.

Children are told that monsters aren't real. That it's in your head and nothing can hurt you.

Marty curves his palm against Rust's elbow and notes the shift in the other man's breathing.

All that lives and dies in Rust's head hurts him. Nothing really gets better.

Adults lie to kids, same as they lie to themselves.

***

All things soft and gentle instilled fear, years ago. Soft was a four-letter word Marty avoided.

When he held his newborn girls for the first time and gazed into their spun-sugar delicate faces, he felt terror.

What if he drops them? What if he breaks them?

The feeling dulls with time. Marty wraps himself snug in his blanket of denials.

That his life isn't enough, that it isn't what he wants.

That his family loves him, and he does his best.

Marty learns that wanting everything leaves him with nothing. That his reach was too great, and his hold too small.

Nothing took roost in Marty's life like a flock of carrion birds. It crowded his space, preening oil-slick feathers, and lined its nest with his heartstrings and shiny shards of broken dreams and jagged nightmares.

He loses everything.

Rust comes back.

***

Marty should get up. He feels he needs to move but he stays still. He tries matching his breathing in time to Rust's, but Rust shifts and his words vibrate into Marty's neck, "Somethin' wrong?"

Marty's voice is soft as old cobwebs, "No."

"Breathin' kinda funny, " Rust says.

"Was breathin' funny for a good while, not like you were sayin' anything then, " Marty says.

"Was sayin' a lot, Marty. Just not with those ten-dollar words you make fun of."

Marty brushes his hand over Rust's stomach, warming the cotton and the skin beneath it.

When they ran out of words, they curved into one another like yin and yang. Rust twining a leg around Marty's in a denim and khaki cadeceus. Marty cradling Rust's face in his fingertips, and drinking from him like water from the desert. Something hidden and life-giving sprung up from desolation.

Out here in the dark, on the grass, Marty knows the truth of his reality. He's sharing it. The Here and Now is real, because there's no double. If time is a true, flat circle, then this moment breaks it open. The line loses its curvature and flattens out. Time is a road, and the lines are not painted yellow. They're prismatic, throwing spark-lights onto deep velvet. There are no dark, glassy reflections. There's no sad twin to this moment, like the previous ones. When the sky turned from black to haloed blue, and Rust fit against him like he was broken away and rejoined, Marty knew. All the spaces between them flared gold, and for that long moment without time, Marty felt he knew a little of what Rust might see in his head.

Marty feels Rust push his nose into the valley of his neck and shoulder and breathe slow against him.

There was a time beyond hope where Marty felt Rust stop breathing. That time passed.

Here there are no jagged edges, sharp branches, and packed dirt. Here there is softness, warmth, and the steady thrum of life against him. His hands hold no wounds, and his skin is clean of blood. Marty feels Rust take his hand, run his thumb up the longest line of his palm.

"How'd we get here?" Marty says, though he knows the answer.

"Same way we've gotten anywhere, Marty."

Rust squeezes his hand, and Marty squeezes back.


	31. Herald

  
Rust wakes from a smeared watercolour dream, his face pressed into one of Marty's super-soft marshmallow pillows. He flattens a palm against it and pushes himself up.

He's alone, and the rest of the bed looks undisturbed. Rust puts his feet on the carpet and stares down.

They're clean.

Rust turns halfway, pulling at the folds of the flannel pants bunched at his thighs.

His journal is on Marty's bedside table.

Rust scratches his fingers through his hair and tracks a single blade of grass as it falls to the carpet.

After two lifetimes of not-wanting, he's struck by how much changed.

He hears Marty's footsteps down the hall, coming closer.

In the doorway, Marty's dressed in black slacks and a grey dress shirt.

"Hey, " Marty says.

Rust nods, "Morning."

Marty steps toward him, holds out a steaming cup to him, " My fucking phone is going shit-house."

Rust breathes in the rich aroma of the coffee, and takes a sip, "About what?"

"I was talkin' to Audrey when the line did that fucking beeping thing for six minutes. I said I'd call her back. Think she's warmin' to the idea of seein' me. I'm excited for her to see this place -- but yeah, I check my messages and it's fucking Gilbough."

Rust looks into his cup, "They found something."

"Shit, more like what didn't they find. Anyway, he's hopped up and pissed at me 'cause I said call the office if shit came up, and then I never checked the phone there, 'cause I was -- " Marty waves his hands, encompassing all the space around him, " -- occupied elsewhere."

"What'd they find?" Rust says.

"Well, he won't fuckin' tell me. Says he's gotta show me, " Marty says, going to his dresser and pulling out a blue patterned tie. Marty ties it in front of his closet mirror, looking at Rust in the reflection, "Now who does that sound like, I wonder?"

Rust blows noisily on his coffee, "Sure don't know what you're meanin' by that."

Marty smiles at that, and Rust looks around the room. His brain catalogues everything happening, at how foreign it feels but how much he's not bothered by any of it.

"You want me to go with you?"

Marty straightens the collar of his shirt, smooths down his tie, "That's up to you."

Rust stands up, and Marty goes to him and hovers around his middle, "Does it itch? 'Cause I've got that stuff for it."

Rust weaves with Marty's movement, like a snake charmer, "Don't change the fucking subject. I'll get dressed and go."

He finishes the coffee while Marty stares everywhere but at him. Rust folds Marty's hands around the still-hot, empty mug, and presses a firm kiss to his cheek, "Thank you."

Marty doesn't move until the bathroom door shuts behind Rust. The back of his neck and the coffee cup in his hand feel the same temperature.

 

***

 

 Maynard Gilbough hoists a cardboard box off the hood of his grey Ford Taurus as Marty's black Cadillac parks in front of Hart Investigative Solutions.  Thomas Papania  drapes an arm out the passenger window, his fingers clenching and releasing rhythmically.

  "He brought Cohle, " Papania says.

Gilbough squints at his partner through the windshield, " ' Course he did.  Saves me askin' Marty to go get him."

 

***

Once all four men settle at Marty's boardroom-style table, Gilbough puts his hands on the box lid.

 

"We've been up there non-stop. Teams are takin' apart the house.  Most other cops are chasin' off looters and the like."

 

"Murder fans, " Rust says, " Wantin' macabre souvenirs. Like people who write love letters to death-row prisoners."

 

  Papania nods, "We taped off sections, had teams with flood-lights, full security, the works.  Place is like murder central Fort Knox."

 

  Marty cracks his knuckles, and shifts in his chair, "So, what are you showin' me?"

 

  "We went back over Dora Lange again.  Over what she left.  Her journal?  Found out Errol Childress was quite the writer himself, " Gilbough says, pulling the lid off the box.

 

  "What, like he's out there writin' odes to Carcosa and shit?" Marty scoffs.

 

  Gilbough pulls a thick, black book from the box and sets it on the table.  Rust thinks of closed fists on coffin lids, as Gilbough sets it down.

 

 "Could be bullshit. Could be nothin', but I figured when Papania and I were goin' through the shelves, y'all want to know."

 

 Rust leans toward the book and Marty feels his spinal column turn to ice cubes.

 Papania tips the cover open to reveal an old news-clipping that Marty recognizes. 

 

 It's the same one he keeps inside his Nietszche book.

 

"Of course, could be everything, " Papania intones, looking straight at Rust, "Little details bein' what they are. Case breakers, and all."

 

 Rust tilts back in his chair, leveling his gaze like crosshairs at Papania then turning to Marty, "Now who does that sound like, I wonder."


	32. Singular

  
Marty knows, sure as anything, they've been maneuvered. _Ask for Hart, get Cohle too_. He turns sideways in his chair, feet pointed in Rust's direction and watches Papania attempt to work at Rust.

He feels Gilbough's stare like a settling weight. The man can stare at the back of his head all he likes or doesn't like. Marty's going to watch Rust and move from there. Marty's scalp prickles with cold sweat and cool, talon claws near his forehead. The sensation of moving on solid ground to crumbling sod. He's watching Rust, and that old look is filling Rust's face again. A glass filled with cold dark.

Marty worries a hangnail on his left thumb, pulls at the edge near bleeding. He's kept the house free of liquor. Rust smokes off and on, but keeps to the yard. He doesn't ask for beer, though Marty'd buy him whatever he asked for. Rust doesn't ask.

Marty grinds the heel of his left hand into his knee. Rust was clockwork when it came to his pills, after the hospital. Marty figured he'd have to wrangle Rust in a blanket and lose some fingers forcing the meds down his throat. But it was for naught. Rust took them without complaint, and Marty put the cold medicine he'd stashed under the kitchen sink back into the mirrored cabinet in the bathroom.

But now, Rust looks brittle. That word hammers into Marty's head. Less than half an hour with Gilbough and Papania and that fucking book on the table is chiseling away at Rust like a jackhammer on marble.

That sweaty gleam is coming back. Marty names it Crash, as he thinks of dry, bristled snake scales and old leather.

Papania wears a face not too far removed from the way Rust looked, back when Marty first met him. Detached yet driven. Aloof and engaged. It's a hunter's look, and Marty feels that Papania's trying to flush something out of Rust, like a quail pheasant from the brush.

Rust needs to lose that junkie look on his face right the fuck now. Marty's three steps from throwing his jacket over Rust's head and herding him into the car and driving who the fuck knows where, just somewhere else. Gotta go somewhere else.

Papania's fishing. He's throwing lines at Rust and Rust sits there, eyes casting hooks from the book in front of him to somewhere over Papania's head. Rust isn't turning pages, he's consumed by the news article, and the implications. But Rust is silent.

"Look, all I'm sayin' is this involves you, " Papania says.

Rust takes the pen near Papania and uses the capped end to close the front cover. He won't touch it.

"It's evidence. I think you need to look at it more, " Papania continues.

Rust flips the pen over his fingers like a magician walking a coin, "I don't work for you."

Papania turns his attention to Marty, shifting his chair with his hands flat on the table, "Marty..."

Marty feels Gilbough's stare like a brick wall at his back, "Don't look at me. I ain't helpin' you. The guy's dead. What's a dead man's book gotta do with anything?"

Gilbough speaks then, "Told you we've been chasin' off looters. People takin' things."

"From the house?" Marty says, Rust turning toward him in his peripheral.

"And the tunnels, " Gilbough says.

"Sounds like you need to light some fires under people. Get that all closed off before some tweaker starts selling bundles of sticks on E-Bay for profit, " Rust says.

Marty looks at Rust and sees him fighting the line, like a hooked fish. Marty knows, he's so goddamn sure, that he's hooked. That an inescapable truth of Rust is that he needs something to go after. Somewhere to focus. Without that, it'd be the bottle, or pills, or even cocaine.

Chasing monsters kills just as well as any drug.

The men go silent, the book on the table thrumming with some insidious vibration.

Goddamn it, Marty doesn't want to lose Rust again. Not again. Not after leaving him bloody, to walk away. Leaving him stranded, when he was suspended. Leaving him to himself, for Maggie to find.

Somewhere in the mist of Later, he'll lose Rust. But not Here and not Now.

"I meant what I said, " Marty says, looking from Papania to Gilbough, "Why don't you two try runnin' this on your own. I'm not lookin' to be your bloodhound."

Gilbough tucks his chin in, and tilts his head in a _you're gonna be that way_ manner.

Papania stares holes through Rust and looks from the black book and then back to Rust.

"I don't work for you. Company men, " Rust says, getting up. "You're on your own. Work with that."  
  
***

Ten minutes in the car, driving god knows where, and Marty lets go, "Fuck that shit, really. Like it wasn't obvious."

Rust turns from the window, "I'm not worryin' about it."

"Man, that burns my... _jeez_ , like I'm just gonna say 'sure, I'll solve your shit and tell you how it is."

"Marty..."

"And Papania, sittin' there like he's got shit cased. How'd he ever make detective?"

"Marty..."

"And I know it wasn't me they're askin' after. It was you. And it... _fuck_...the nerve of..."

"Marty..."

"What?"

"Breathe."

"I am, I'm fine, I just..."

"I know."

***

Marty takes Rust for lunch, figuring coffee alone won't fill anyone up. Rust moves easier now, still slow and careful.  
His face loses the calculating junkie look over waffles and peach preserves, and Marty breathes light through his nose positive they dodged a bullet.

Marty watches Rust, and tries to see him the way Rust sees people. He can't do it. He can't separate Rust from his emotions. How the man makes him crazy, angry, flustered and passionate. He'd flipped through Rust's journal on the couch after they'd come in from the yard like two drunks off a weekend bender. Marty's focus had been to get Rust cleaned up and off to sleep, and Rust knew underneath everything, how Marty felt. So Marty hustled him off to bed, gentle but not arguing.

And he slept on the couch, the book in his lap. Consumed with making sense of the tornado of information and feelings in his head.

There are pages of Marty's hands rendered in ink and charcoal. The detail of his ever-present ring, the lines in his palms. Marty'd shut the book, thinking somehow it was all too intimate.That he shouldn't be looking at this, despite knowing Rust drew all of this with the intention of Marty seeing it, somewhere down the road. Hands are commonplace, everyone's got them, but how many people have pages of them in intricate detail?

Rust scrapes his plate, and leaves nothing to waste. He drinks his coffee, and eyes Marty over the cup rim, "What?"

"Singular, " Marty blurts out.

Rust sets his cup down, the brightness of his eyes startling Marty, "How's that?"

Marty rubs at his neck, "I...was thinkin' about you and that's the word I had..."

Rust taps blunt-edged fingernails against his cup, "When was this?"

Marty cradles his chin in his palm, elbow propped on the table, "Last night. A while. Couple years." Marty tilts his empty cup to look inside, "Long as anything. Just found the word for it now."


	33. Present Tense

  
Marty's cup fills with swirling, dark roast arabica before he reminds himself he shouldn't drink it.

"Was gettin' heavy in there, " Rust says, as their server clears away plates and cutlery.

Marty slurps at his too-hot coffee, "Wasn't anything comin' out of that room lookin' like good news. Like I couldn't tell what their deal was."

Rust nods, "Was gonna ask if they ever work for a living, or just outsource all the grunt work."

The gap in Marty's teeth appears before he takes another sip, "Papania still don't like you."

"Oh, well then we have that in common. Mutual dislike. Never looked to win Mr. Popular, " Rust says, his eyebrows up with a pointed stare.

Marty pulls at his tie, " I wasn't ever popular, so you can knock that shit off. I talked to people, doesn't mean everyone liked me."

Rust drinks his coffee and adds, "Saw your face in there, Marty. You're a great talker but you're shit at bluffing."

Marty puts his cup down into his saucer with a loud, ceramic clink, "How exactly you do mean?"

Rust's eyes are hooded in their lids while he blinks slow, "They had your attention."

"Had yours too, moreso than mine."

Rust leans back, his gaze all over Marty's face, "They hook me, and they get you."

Marty coughs, "I'd say the reverse is true. But they want you to bird-dog their case, or what's left of it. They wouldn't have shit without you. Hell, neither'd I."

Rust cradles his cup in his hands, notes they're not shaking. That, and he hasn't had a smoke in six hours.

"They don't have a new case, so they're sifting through the Childress house. They should just burn it, you know. Burn it all down. Because it'll pull people as long as it stands, " Rust says. Marty leans closer across the table toward him.

"People are stealing from the house. Taking pieces. All that place ever did was steal, and take and keep people. Some sick symmetry to it, I see. As for that book, all I needed to see was the article. He knew, Marty. Sure as we're sittin' here, he knew about how we were looking for him. Reggie and Dewall...he, uh...he knew," Rust says, looking at Marty's ring, something to focus on that doesn't look back at him.

"Well, it's their case. And he's dead, Rust. Anything crawls out of that mess, or comes up while they're lookin', it's nothing to do with you or me, " Marty says, "And besides, you're healin' up and I wasn't havin' you come anywhere near that shit again. It's not worth gettin' wound up when there's nowhere to go with it. There's nothin' to chase."

Rust scrubs his palms on his thighs, "More and more I think I'm not good for anything but that. Decades of that, it's like programming. You learn it, and it's your routine, and it's all you do."

Marty reaches across the table at that, and puts his hand flat, "That's bullshit. Nothing says you can't change what you do. You just gotta want to."

Rust folds his arms on the tabletop, Marty's fingers a hair's breadth from his skin, "You gonna sit there and tell me you weren't gonna take what they were tellin' you and run off with it?"

Marty's eyes pin Rust where he sits, "If you'd gotten it in your head to bite on what they were hangin' above you, I wasn't gonna sit there. You start chasin', I'm going with you. You wanna run, I'm there too. If you were fallin' in, I'm fuckin' pullin' you out. You get me? I'm not leavin' you stranded. You're not by yourself."

Rust breathes out long through his nose, "You're goddamn stubborn, Martin, you know that?"

"If I didn't have your high-horse sensibility to say so, I'd be livin' in blissful ignorance, now wouldn't I?"

There's a white-slivered crescent of smile that answers Marty, "You do have a way with people, though."

"I mean it, Rust, they come knockin' around for shit, and you think you wanna look, don't you go givin' me shit for lookin' out for you. I won't have it. Not again."

Rust nods, "And all they have is a book, for now."

"It's not a fresh case with a book, man."

Rust drains off the last of his coffee, " They want a fresh case, they need a fresh body, and I'm of the hope they never get one."

Marty narrows his eyes, "But you're thinking somewhere down the road..."

Rust meets Marty's eyes and says, " A throne isn't a throne without someone to sit it. There's always someone next in line..."


	34. Solace

As Marty pays the bill for their lunch, he catches sight of Rust in the passenger seat. Rust's eyes are closed, and his chin is propped up in his palm as he leans on the window.

The pang in his chest doesn't alarm him. He's run the gauntlet with his doctor over the last year and surmises if Carcosa didn't stop his heart, a couple cups of coffee here and there won't hurt.

But it is his heart, and it is serious. But there's no doctor for Marty's particular pain.

Rust says _thank you_ more times of late than Marty can ever remember in their seven years together, and Marty wonders -- _not every day_ \-- if there isn't something underneath the way Rust says it to him.

Marty doesn't dwell on how he tells Rust _you're welcome_ and looks away while Rust stares at him in that lazy, fluid way that calls to Marty in a blended flavour of blackstrap molasses and bourbon.

He's in the driver's seat buckling up when Rust stirs against the window and murmurs, "Thank you."

Marty guesses if he leaned toward Rust and kissed him he'd either taste black coffee, maple syrup and peaches from lunch, or the aloe vera lotion with vitamin E that Rust uses on his hands.

Before Marty starts the engine, he glances at Rust and says "You're welcome."

It's six blocks before Marty realizes he should have just kissed him.

=====

Marty stops at Winn-Dixie to grab a few things. He parks in the shade and says, "What do you like?"

Rust turns from the window, "What'd you mean?"

Marty points at the grocery store and says, "Dinner? Food? That shit people need to live?"

"Just had lunch, " Rust says.

"I hate buyin' food on an empty stomach. Practically clear out the store, " Marty says, "So what do you like?"

"Whatever you get's fine, Marty, " Rust says, his voice soft and distant.

Marty closes the door halfway before asking, "Are you all right?"

Rust's face is sheened and waxy, and his hands are clenched to his khaki-clad knees.

The hesitant look on Marty's face irritates Rust, and the expanding balloon he feels in his chest concerns him.

"Just go. I'll be okay."

Rust sees Marty turn back to look at him before entering the store. He lets out a long exhale and grits his teeth. He wants a beer. He wants a sixer. An entire carton of Camel Blues. A banister of Peruvian flake. He wants to flip pages in that goddamn book Childress had.

That gnawing feeling that settled on him after he woke up from his coma is back. It went away when Marty took him home. Rust shakes his head a little, corrects himself. Not his home, Marty's home. Except that feels false. Marty made space for him. He went from _Cohle, you motherfucker_ , to _I'd throw you a fuckin' barbell, why would I ever help you_ to _What can I do to help?_

They've learned gratitude. Rust is grateful for Marty saving his life, but it feels like a gift he doesn't know how to use. None of his old habits support his new life. They're rotted pilings ravaged by rolling waves. They'll come down and take Rust with them.

He feels guilt, blunt and pressing, for relying on Marty. Marty who offers now what he never would long ago.

====

Marty drops four russet potatoes and a rotisserie chicken into his grocery basket. He adds two lemons and three peaches and thinks of Rust growing stronger and healthier. There's no guarantee given that Rust will stay once he's healed up. Marty picks up a plastic carton of grape tomatoes and knows he'll never ask Rust to do anything against what Rust wants. Not like he could ever force the man to stay. If and when Rust goes, Marty wants him healthy. Wants some sort of reassurance Rust won't gallop off to Alaska for one farewell cruise on a crab boat.

The first time Marty asked Rust "What do you need? What can I do?" he received a firm shake of Rust's head and a firm, "Nothin'" as an answer. As time went on and Rust's condition improved, his responses lengthened with expletives and several varieties of the phrase _den mother, babysitter, parole officer._

The crankier Rust sounded, the better Marty felt.

Rust shaving was a breakthrough. Meant he was looking in the mirror as a person, not just staring into the reflection of one eye. Rust always presented himself as put together even when he was falling apart.

Marty waits in the cashier line and notes the ratty leather jacket the twenty-something guy in front of him wears. There's nothing on the leather -- no patches. Looks like the kind of coat people buy in the stores nowadays where it looks like a beat-to-shit, lived-in jacket but it's five hundred dollars and someone was paid to ruin it.

Crash had style in places where style was irrelevant. Less the outfit and more the attitude, Marty thought.

Rust stood out by virtue of movement. Contained and precise. The man had a stride like a surgeon's cut.

Getting Rust to talk about himself back then was much the same. Marty got to thinking long conversations out of Rust were like donating blood. A transfusion of thought and feeling.

Maggie at that first dinner, _"You ever ask him about himself?"_

No. And when he got around to it, Marty got reticent answers in return. Rust never was big on talking about himself if there wasn't a benefit to the information.

Marty hefts his basket on the conveyor belt and thinks - not for the first time - how a brush with death gives life a new perspective.

=====

Despite Rust's claims of _'not hungry'_ , he decimates the other half of the chicken Marty bought. His vise-grip headache dulls and muffles further when Marty hands him half a white pill.

"You were refusin' them before, said the pain wasn't bad, but if I dim these lights more we'll be sittin' in the dark, " Marty says, as Rust downs the halved pill with a swallow of water.

Rust stands silent and Marty looks at him, "You're tired."

Rust shakes his head, but it's so slow that Marty snorts, "You're gonna fall and break your head you stand any longer."

Marty helps him to bed. Rust sits on the end, puzzling at the vase of red, orange and yellow flowers on the side table.

"Where'd those come from?" Rust says, though he knows damn well Marty bought them but can't remember Marty bringing them inside.

"Brown bag. Distracted you with the chicken."

"Said you were puttin' towels in the dryer, " Rust says, eyes narrowed and lips quirked up on one side.

"I did both. Multi-tasking, " Marty beams.

Rust nods against his pillow, "Look at you, got everything cased out."

Marty shoves his hands in his pockets, "Yeah, I try."

"Do more'n that, Marty. No bullshit." Rust's words warm him, make him palm the back of his neck.

"You need anything?"

Rust's eyes open, his sight filled with red, orange and yellow. He takes a breath of fresh flowers and soft grey cotton and says "No."

He listens to Marty leave and thinks he should have said _Yes_.

====

There were only so many instances of adulterating spouses that Marty could handle before he pushes all five files aside and thinks about having a drink.

Except the house is a alcohol desert. He'd done that for Rust.

The house isn't a sandcastle, Marty feels. It's a small haven. A place of solace.

He'd done that for Rust, too.

He hadn't been close to the giving type at all, way back. Everything he had was a point of pride. Something to display. Something to flaunt. Something to collect while he went on the hunt for other things.

 _Terribly territorial_ , Marty thinks. _This is mine, and **you can't have it**. This is mine, **I own it**._

Now it's _this is mine and I am giving it to you. I give myself. **I have nothing else.**_

Marty gives, and Rust accepts.

Rust probably hears him, when Marty steps soft as possible to his own bedside and takes Rust's journal and his reading glasses back to the kitchen.

Near the end of the book, there are more poems, a few names Marty recognizes : Yeats, and Whitman. Rust copied one of Whitman's poems in bold, dark ink - so much like the black-ink bird on Rust's skin.

_As I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado,_  
_The confession I made I resume—what I said to you in the open air I resume:_  
_I know I am restless, and make others so;_  
_I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;_  
_(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;_  
_It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman;)_  
_For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;_  
_I am more resolute because all have denied me, than I could ever have been had all accepted me;_  
_I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule;_  
_And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me;_  
_And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;_  
_...Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,_  
_Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated._

He closes the book and rubs at his forehead. It's not a love poem (some of the poems brook zero argument to the subject) but it's so... _personal._

Rust sat out in his yard replicating an entire poem from memory for him. And Marty knows the moment. The long moment in the dark.

A soft footfall alerts him. Rust is awake, padding around his living room in his flannel pajamas and wifebeater shirt like a spectre. _Unmoored_ , Marty thinks. That word repeats in the book under his hands.

He doesn't know if Rust sees him, but Marty watches Rust touch photos on Marty's shelves and just touch _everything_.

The words stick in Marty's throat - _What do you need? What can I do?_

The dryer buzzes upstairs, snapping Marty, like an elastic, through a time where he inhabited spaces he wasn't welcome, to the here and now where he feels Rust needs something from him, and he doesn't know what it is. There's something he's missing _and it's right the fuck in front of him_.

Rust turns at the buzzing echo, like a toy dancer on a track, and Marty holds his breath. Rust is shaking - he seems like a six foot tuning fork, vibrating at extreme frequencies of fear and confusion. Marty bolts upstairs, ignoring his knees and his own pains, fuck all that shit.

He dumps all the hot towels into his open hamper and keeps the largest one. When he gets back downstairs, Rust is staring out the kitchen window at something Marty can't see. He could never fucking _see_ anything, was there anyone so goddamn blind?

Marty steps up behind Rust and wraps the enormous towel around him, holding him close. Rust sighs and his shaking turns jagged and Marty hugs him.

Marty asks him, soft words and careful hands. _What do you need? What can I do?_

Rust presses his forehead against Marty's, whispers _touch me just touch me and don't stop_ against his eyelids.

And Marty does.


	35. Grace

 

  
The ashen sheet around his waist casts Rust as a draped twin to Rodin's Thinker, save for the sketchbook in his lap. His thoughtful pose is directed at the sleeping figure on the bed. Rust's deft fingers streak the ivory page with lines and gradients. He rubs a thumb against the spine of the book, and memories spark in his vision like fresh-struck matches.

Marty has sculptor's hands.

On the barren homestretch of their partnership, Marty's hands were hammers and chisels. They pounded and cut away at everything and everyone they touched. Aside from their confrontation in the locker room, any touch between them had come with open palms and clemency. The middle of two-thousand-and-two dissolved that fledgling peace. That bird might have flown far and wide, but its wings were broken on the pavement from sharp fists and a Ford tailgate.

Those hands cut him. Marty took off his rings. Oh, how he'd known the minute Marty stormed down the steps, hell following at his heels. Rust had done the only thing he could. He put his hands up, and somehow that rote action incensed Marty. With all his life spent around roughness and brutality, Rust knew what a man looked like when he spoiled for a fight. Later, Rust admits he'd known that storm built long before. Black, rumbling clouds rolling off a good deed -- the road to hell and good intentions. It reads like a bad joke in his head.

_When is a lawnmower not a lawnmower?_

_When you're talking to Martin Hart._

He's had to reconsider a great deal concerning Marty. And himself.

And Time. He's thought about Time. That lives begin, and change, and end in the span of a day.

=====

_24 Hours Earlier_

 

Rust awakens uncertain. His thoughts flicker by like moth wings. Was he fully dreaming or imagining, and was there ever a difference?

Marty's bedroom is quiet. His house quiet in ways separate from desertion. Marty fills this space. The man possesses multitudes Rust is halfway sure even Marty wasn't aware of. The hardest person to know is, after all, yourself. Thousands of years and hundreds of ideologies, humankind never met a mystery like its own reflection.

Marty's space is calm. There are no raised voices, no underlying hum of tension, no hidden fuse for violence. The only calm Rust knew was the one before the storm. The only stillness as the time before the swift strike. The calm of Marty's space is foreign, and Rust can't find the source of his unsettled feeling until he stands up.

He looks down at his feet and sees a blackened bruise-coloured eel-shape slide around his ankles. Rust steps onto the bed, his weight sinking into the pillowtop, and marks the blades of the ceiling fan whickering above him. The shape doesn't follow him onto the bed. It drifts with a sleepy sentience toward the open bedroom door, a finger's width from the light spilled down the hall from the kitchen.

His mouth fills with the taste of attic dust and talcum powder. He wants to call out to Marty, but the air in his lungs is tendrils of aluminum frosting up his throat.

Rust hears Marty in the kitchen, the rush of water in the sink, and the sound of the tap shutting off. He pulls in a deep breath, like he's pearl-diving, and steps onto the bedroom floor. The shape rushes to him like a lost pet, some permafrost smoky serpent with scales that chill his feet and crawl up his legs.

He's cold. He's going to get frostbite indoors, in Louisiana in early June. He can't feel his feet, and he knows if he falls he's done for. Rust stumbles down the hall, pressing his palms flat against the walls. His skin is clammy with fear-sweat but he doesn't run. Prey runs. Hunters do not.

Marty at the kitchen table, leafing through Rust's journal. The shape at his knees solidifies. Rust is caught in a cast of smoky amber. His legs are cold enough to make his brain think they're burning. He looks down at the shape as it splits and the twin moves behind him.

A sound that is not laughter reaches him. It pulls hairs up on the back of his neck. The noise sounds like a child. He dares not look. Rust, who would not avert his eyes from most horrors, will not look behind him. That sound is a trick, and it is not the usual one that his misfiring synapses would pull. He has never heard this child's voice, but Rust has heard its gutteral, adult twin.

Before the burns. Before the scars.

Before the kingdom came into being.

Rust swallows the scream that sits on his tongue and reaches the living room, Marty in his peripheral vision.

Marty looks up. He takes off his reading glasses and stands.  
  
The frosty burn recedes and Rust moves forward, certain Marty can't see what's following him. Rust touches Marty's bookshelves, ghosts fingers over the picture frames, book spines, and rounded oak edges.

The smoky shape, that blue-black eel, around his feet hesitates when Marty moves. Rust has never known a hallucination to interact with another person.

The heady relief that floods Rust threatens to buckle his legs. There's a prolonged buzzing from over his head and Marty bolts, to Rust's rising-bile sense of horror. Marty leaves him.

Marty left. Marty ran. And if Marty couldn't see what he saw, and _he_ ran...

Rust wonders if he has the strength to run. Can he make it to the door and outside before the thing behind him rises like a black tsunami and carries him away? His skull feels as though it is expanding. His body tenses for the killing strike. He is prey. He isn't running, but he's caught. A sense of greedy glee radiates off his back, prickling hairs up his neck again. The starved thing behind him will never be sated. What's behind him will consume him.

Warmth at his back. A solid weight and the wafting scent of sun-baked cotton.

_**Marty.** _

Rust turns in Marty's grasp and wraps himself tight against him. Rust shakes and Marty holds steady, asks him in a suede-soft voice _what can i do, what do you need._

Rust watches through half-closed eyelids as the smoky thing settles near the front door and makes what Rust think is a cheated, betrayed noise. Whatever it is, it can't get to him here.

He wants to burn himself down to embers from the heat Marty gives off. Sensation stokes in his body, white-hot flares under Marty's breath and his careful touch. As though Rust would crumble, and _oh yes_ , Rust thinks, _I would gladly do that._

But he doesn't crumble -- he answers Marty with  _touch me just touch me and don't stop_ , and Marty does.

Marty breathes hot into him, burning out the chill in his lungs and chest and Rust understands then about man's fascination with fire.

======

Marty holds Rust, and does what Rust asks. He touches him. With hands and lips and breath and fingertips, they give and receive and his arms are full of Rust like the man's trying to burrow into him.

Rust frightened is a sight Marty hates to see. Rust, who never lost control even when he lost control.

Fear was a word Rust didn't seem to have learned. Marty wagers once Rust figured he had nothing to lose, fear was trite. Marty himself lived with fear all the time. Fear of missing something. Missing out on an opportunity. A fear he'd never have all he wanted, when all he had was what he needed.

Rust looks like the title of one of his fancy books. _Fear and trembling._

It's strange, how they communicate now. Silence and distance and forced contact replaced by words and closeness and intimacy.  
  
Rust presses his forehead to Marty's and his lips find Marty's as well. It starts chaste, and turns anything but in the space of two breaths. Rust pulls at Marty's shirt and wonders how sturdy his kitchen table is before Marty pulls away and locks eyes on him.

"Now that you're...kinda lucid, " Marty forces out, marveling himself how the curve of fear to arousal turns _just like that_ , "You mind tellin' me what you were lookin' at?"

Words come easier when they touch, so Marty folds the cooling towel tighter around Rust's shoulders and reins him in with an arm, "You looked like you were gonna run out the door. Or maybe through my goddamn wall, like that Looney Tunes coyote. Except you don't run, Rust. So what's the deal?"

It's like their walk out of the hospital lot -- that nexus point for everything After. Life, it seems to Marty, is now full of markers bearing Befores and Afters. They move together, to the shelf where Rust keeps his ledger and he turns on every light he passes on their way. Rust thumbs through pages and the spine of the book parts near the end, to a pencil-crayoned shading of a blue-black spiral, an upside-down tornado, its wide funnel cup stretching downward to eternity.

"This is what I saw, " Rust says, trailing a fingertip none too steady down the tail of the spiral. " I was asleep, or close to it, and when I woke up this was on the floor."

Marty tugs at Rust's hand, like he's a balloon on a fraying string that the wind could steal.

"I felt it, Marty. It was all I saw before he hit me, " Rust says.

Cold lead pools at Marty's feet.

"You're sayin' you had a vision down there and he got the drop on you?"

Rust coughs, and Marty rubs at his shoulder, "I think that's how he got everyone, Marty. Like stunning cattle. Dora Lange, those kids, the drugs. Stephanie Kordish. He had them doped up plenty and that's what they saw."

Marty chewed at his lower lip, and moved his jaw, "How come I didn't see nothin'?"

Rust tightens his grip on Marty, "Because your brain isn't rewired with several kilos of potent narcotics, Marty. You aren't some wobbly, burnout with a flash-fried cortex."

Marty looks downright doubtful that his lack of damage is a good thing.

Rust loops his arms around Marty's neck, and gets in close, "It's good you don't see, because it's not somethin' anyone should. There was a choice, nobody would. But I see. And I think it's fucking great that you don't."

Marty's brows draw their skeptical line, and Rust continues, "I see what you can't, and you see what I can't. And, " Rust pauses and kisses him on the mouth, "that's why we work like we do."

 

======

 

They sit at the table, Marty busying himself with his kettle and Rust staring at the front door.

"I didn't tell Papania and Gilbough, obviously, " Rust says.

Marty nods over the sink and puts the copper kettle on the stove.

"Best not to, " Marty says.

"Because you have any idea how fucking crazy that sounds?" Rust says.

Marty turns to him then, and crosses his arms over his chest, "Doesn't sound crazy. Childress believed it. It's how he did what he did. Hell, you could chalk it up to that language virus thing you were sayin' about with Theriot's ministry."

The more Rust dwells on Joel Theriot, the more he realizes their sameness. He'd used the same coaxing, comfortable narrative to get criminals to confess, the same as Theriot brought comfort to his flock. He and the good preacher Theriot share the same demons too. The bottle, and the regrets. Like mad djinns draped in the moth-eaten fabric of the past.

"No," Rust says, "Theriot was good. He was a good man."

"Yeah, " Marty says, and Rust sees what Marty makes no issue to hide -- that he used to be good and doesn't see how he still is.

"And you are too, Marty. You are, and you don't see it."

Marty puts a teabag in a blue ceramic mug and shrugs, "If you say so."

"I do. I just did."

"You ever see anything good about yourself while you were starin' into that tiny mirror all those years?"

Rust shakes his head, "Wasn't lookin' for good. Was lookin' for purpose."

Marty listens to the kettle whistle a tune and says, "And it never occurred to you the two are not mutually exclusive? You're good. And you got more purpose than most, which is more than anything. Even when you quit, you didn't fucking quit, Rust. You kept on."

"You didn't quit either, Marty."

"Yeah, well I had a certain motivation, " Marty says, both eyes delving straight to Rust's with a _don't fucking think you're runnin' me around, you don't move that fuckin' fast_ sort of look.

"And there's a lot I don't see, " Marty goes on, "You know what that is."

Rust takes the mug Marty offers and watches it steam, "Denial?"

Marty puts his hands on his hips and for a long moment Rust could believe that, minus the loss of his hair and the gain of twenty or so pounds, they're not so far removed from the moment they removed themselves from each other's lives. He's seen that look so often that it's a comfort.

Marty, however, looks fit to spit.

"You are a total prick. Grade A Saguero. If you were a plant, you'd be a fuckin' cactus. Tryin' to make a point, and you get to sit there, don't you think I don't see it all over your face."

"Problem's your face, not mine."

"Are you tryin' to be funny?"

"How'm I doin' so far?"

Marty's mouth curves, "You're improvin', I'll give you that."

Rust watches Marty take his cup back and add to it. His nose tells him it's something spicy and tart.

"You think Tabasco won't show up in green tea?" Rust says.

Marty gives the cup back, and Rust catches a waft of lemon and ginger. He nearly follows the hand and not the mug.

"All the shit you put in your system, I better not see you gettin' picky about lemon tea."

Rust sips at it, and feels summery warmth spread to every corner of him.

Marty has healer's hands.

Rust toasts him, "Beats downers and Robitussin."

"Jesus."

"Him too."

Marty snorts, "That thing about you bein' funny is coasting from ha-ha to strange."

Rust shrugs, "High praise from a barista."

Marty flips him off, and Rust returns it.

"When was your last real good time, Marty? You remember?"

Marty slurps his tea, and swears when he burns his mouth, "Fuck... uh, well, no. Not really. Seem to remember you sayin' people incapable of guilt usually have a good time."

"You remember everythin' I say?"

Marty pulls at his shirt cuffs, "More and more. And good times aside, the most recent would be wakin' up and seein' the girls. And knowin' you're okay. Anything before that don't matter. It's nothing that makes a difference, except right now."

Marty looks at Rust and guesses the steam isn't what's making Rust's eyes water. Marty starts for him and Rust says, "It's okay. That's good, Marty. Ain't nothin' wrong with anything. I'm just...feeling shit out, you know. And you're a good man, Marty. It's not intentions that make people good, it's the outcome."

"Kinda felt I was always having the intention and not the follow-through, " Marty says.

Rust nods, "You've done a hell of a job. You buy this place with an intention or an outcome?"

Marty pulls a chair next to him, "Both. Little by little. Bought it with a good intention, workin' at the outcome."

"Separates a good choice from a bad one, how things turn out."

Marty turns his chair to face Rust, and their knees nearly touch, "You think you pullin' that knife out was a good choice?"

Rust shakes his head, "No. You think you holding on was a bad one?"

Marty says, "No. No, I do not."


	36. Grief

  The kitchen table is covered in files. Marty clears a space large enough for his tea mug and lasts five minutes on casework before his mind wanders off to his bookshelf. To the empty chair at the table with the clean towel folded over the back. Marty takes a swig of his tea and stands up, treading quiet on the bare hardwood toward the bedroom.

Rust is out cold on the bed with a blanket Marty put over him. He’d left the table five hours ago. Marty asked him if he was okay and gotten an _I’m all right now_ in response. Marty watched him go, and waited twenty minutes. For all Rust’s talk of difficulty sleeping, he’d gone out to Dreamland in less time than Marty’s ever seen him.

Marty’d even snapped his fingers over Rust’s head. Nothing.

Marty steps close enough to the bed on habit, and watches Rust breathe. He pushes away thoughts of Rust passing in his sleep. Of Rust dying at all. Rust isn’t going to die here. Not while Marty lives.

Marty hoists Rust’s box of books in his arms and leaves the bedroom door open a fraction.

He fills the space in his shelves with Rust’s books.

Marty flips through _Desolation Angels_ instead of his case files. The words burn in his eyes. He flips through Rust’s journal, and feels the words and images scald in his chest.

Charcoal angels. Marty sees several, all in different poses with different faces, in the journal. Rust never thought anything but contempt for religion, so the angels intrigue Marty. Why did he draw them?

One angel drapes himself across a chest-high block of stone. Marty’s seen Rust lean over file boxes the same way. With the same quiet, tortured expression.

Another angel has a sword, held downward, and his expression is accusing. Marty smells chemical burn-off and musty wood. The sun through his kitchen window is at once white and sterile. His right index finger tightens against an invisible trigger. Reggie Ledoux’s face dissolves into torn flesh and jagged bone.

The angel is not accusing, Marty sees. The angel is righteous. The sword is downward because the killing blow is done.  
Marty closes both books and rubs shaky, sweaty palms on his black slacks. He wishes he had something stronger than tea.

Upstairs in his office, he thinks about a desk. That thought dissolves when he thinks about Rust leaving. He’s more than able to, now. Marty sips at his tea and turns in a full circle. Rust will leave but the house will never be rid of him. Rust is in every room. On every surface he touched.

Back downstairs and looking out the kitchen window, Marty thinks of how Rust touched him. How he’s never been touched like that before in his life. Never with calm, gentle reverence.

If Rust leaves, Marty’s helping him. He doesn’t want to keep Rust here, but he hopes he can let him go.

  
\-----

Rust hears the scattering of pages down the hallway. His thoughts run unchecked, like spooled tape through reels. Sometimes it is comforting to think of nothing. Other times it is comforting to think of waking every day in this space. He showers on autopilot. Cleans his teeth. He has a solid moment where he feels his feet firm underneath him in front of the mirror. Rust studies the jagged line at his belly. How the skin has tightened. He’s healing, and not all of him is scar tissue.

Rust goes back to the bedroom, and stops in front of Marty’s closet.

His boxes are gone. Rust tilts his head at his reflection in the mirrored door. His double slides away as he opens the closet. Hangers chime a discordant tune as he runs his hands over the shirts inside. There’s a color gradient in here. White to gray to light blue, to hunter green, to black. His shirts next to Marty’s in a cotton spectrum. He looks at the closet floor, and sees folded, cardboard corners.

Marty hung his clothes and kept the boxes nearby.

Rust dresses. He buttons his black shirt and thinks of Marty’s hands.

He goes down the hall and stops at the kitchen threshold. Marty’s leaning on the counter, engrossed in his borrowed Kerouac novel. Rust sees him backlit from the sun through the window. He wants to tell Marty that blue and gold are his colors. He wants to press his cheek against Marty’s back and smell black coffee, cologne and tell Marty he’s beautiful. He doubts anyone ever told Marty that. The ache of that truth goes deeper than marrow.

\------

Marty pours coffee into a red mug and sets it on the counter by the sink. He stirs his tea and flips a page in the book. Rust steps into the kitchen, his eyes cast wide and blinking.

“Morning, “ Marty says. “How’d you sleep?”

Rust shrugs and straightens his shirt collar before taking the mug, “Fine, thank you.”

Marty’s brows draw together at the words. Somehow fine smells wrong.

His cell-phone rattles against the table surface and Marty checks it.

 _ **Gilbough**_ flashes in a syncopated rhythm across the screen. Marty lets it go to message.

“Who’s that?” Rust asks, his gaze on Marty’s face and not the phone screen.

“Gilbough, “ Marty says, in a tone people reserve for in-laws they don’t like.

“Might be important, “ Rust says. _Important_ pulled out in a tone that only Marty can read. _Fuck-all_  is what he hears.

“Well, I ain’t worryin’ about it, “ Marty says, and tucks the phone into a pocket in his suit jacket and puts down his book.

“You goin’ out today?” Rust says.

Marty nods, “Could do with some change of scenery. Gettin’ out’s good. I’m gonna swing by the office, nothin’ exciting.”

“Can you drop me by Doumain’s? I need my truck, “ Rust says, draining off the last of his coffee and putting the mug in the sink.

Marty half-turns, caught between thought and motion, “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Rust says, “Some place I gotta be.”

“Sure, “ Marty says, “Wherever you need to go.”

  
\------

Marty alternates between Rust and the road. He knows the answer’s in front of him.

“So, where are you off to?”

Rust turns from the window, “Houston. Just for the day.”

“You feelin’ up to it, you know, by yourself I mean?”

Rust narrows his eyes, tone gone to vinegar for a second, “I’ve driven from Alaska to Houston in fifty hours. I’ve gone places coked up and come out shot up. I think I can make a three hour drive without bleeding internally, Marty.”

Marty catches Rust wincing. The man never flinched from anything except basic human contact.

He rubs his thumbs along the side of the steering wheel before he answers, “I’m not makin’ any fuss like you can’t do for yourself, man. Pardon me for givin’ a shit.”

“You’re pardoned, “ Rust says, staring out the window.

Marty drums his fingers on the wheel and shoots Rust a sidelong look.

He turns left instead of right and Rust’s head tilts up like a cat following a bird in flight.

“Wrong way, Marty.”

“Not from where I’m sittin’.”

“Bar’s that way.”

“I know.”

Rust turns toward Marty in his seat, “This is the I-10.”

“Yes, it is.”

Rust’s reply is soft with wonder, Marty barely catches it : you motherfucker.

Marty takes his sunglasses from the console and puts them on, “Been a while since I’ve been to Houston.”

\-----

“You don’t even know where you’re going, “ Rust says to Marty, though he’s staring at his own reflection.

“I’m going to Houston. Then you’ll tell me where you need to go. Seems simple to me.”

“What for?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Rust. Because I give a shit. And you can keep your pardon, I don’t want it, “ Marty says. His tone is light, and it irritates Rust that it doesn’t irritate him any more. Marty’d had that same goddamn tone -- _well I guess I’m a people person_ \-- and Rust left the bar table feeling jealous. Jealousy was a foreign feeling. Envy might have been closer.

Rust doesn’t feel jealous now. He feels a pervading sense of wanting and of being undeserving of what he wants. Of who he wants.

“For fuck’s sake, Marty, go ahead and give a shit if that’s what you want, “ Rust says.

“What the fuck do you want, Rust? That’s the question.”

“I wanted my truck. I wanted to drive to Houston. I wanted time to think.”

“You get two out of three. Except I’m driving.”

Rust lets out a done-up sigh that widens Marty’s smile, “Look, we get there and I’ll take you where you wanna go and then I’ll pick you up when you’re done. Last time I was in Houston wasn’t so great. Kinda did a bar tour, and don’t remember most of it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Guess at the time I was into it. Got to tell some kinda war story.” Marty’s smile fades, “You know, the Ledoux thing. Funny now, the stories I got, I don’t wanna tell anyone. Not even myself.”

Rust braces his elbow against the passenger door and rests his temple in his palm, “Would you tell me?”

Marty looks at him, “You’re in all of them, Rust. You know ‘em already.”

  
\------

  
They’re silent as they slip through Lake Charles, like holding breath past a graveyard. Marty fiddles with the radio dial and cuts off three talk radio stations and two rambling holy-rollers. He switches the radio off as Rust remarks, “Thought you liked that stuff.”

“I did, “ Marty says, “I don’t buy what they’re sellin’ anymore. Wholesale salvation somehow don’t sit right. One prayer fittin’ all?”

Rust scratches at his chin and forsakes his customary window-gazing for a sight more interesting. He resolves to look at Marty the rest of the way.

“It just don’t seem right for me...with what I’ve seen and done. Like it’s for a different person. How can anyone know what someone’s been through?” Marty continues.

Marty toyed with religion after oh-two. He tried to salvage some goodness with a facsimile of it. The flavor of his hypocrisy soured everything. He quit after quitting the C.I.D.

His soul-searching changed on a road like this one. The time he looked behind him and saw his future.

“What happened to silent reflection?”

Marty snorts, “Had a decade of that, more’n enough.”

“What happened to you? I know you said you had a thing goin’ with a woman for a while. Why’d it fall apart?”

Marty sighs, “Catherine. Yeah, that had nothin’ to do with her. She’s great, and she put up with me pretty damn steady.”

Rust blinks at him, slow and waiting, “So, what happened? I don’t know this story, Marty. Wasn’t there.”

“The thing of it is, there was only ever so many times I could tell a baseball story, or a bull-riding story til it got to be pathetic, all right? How many times you tell people your Alaskan fishing adventures?”  
“ I didn’t tell anybody, Marty. Wasn’t anyone to tell, “ Rust says. “And they’re not any kind of nice story you’d tell to people.”

Marty nods, and chews at his bottom lip, “Kinda what I’m gettin’ at. When I ran out of the feel-good stuff, like _hey I was gonna pitch for the Cardinals or the Astros or the Braves_ and show every limp noodle on the bull circuit how to get the job done, all that was left was the stuff I didn’t want to tell anyone about. And it was the biggest part of my life, and I was leavin’ it out of dinner conversations.”

Marty looks over at Rust, who shrugs a shoulder and says, “Go on.”

“ I wasn’t honest with her. I told her I was divorced, and I had kids. And when she asked how I got along with my ex, and how often I saw my kids, I made stuff up. Catherine’d ask me when I quit bull-riding, and I told her around the time I became a cop. When I got past the sly jokes about a man in uniform and creative ways to get out of speeding tickets, there was still stuff she wanted to know. And ain’t no way was I tellin’ her about kids in the woods, and women painted on walls and wearin’ antlers, and what it felt like to kill a man, or smackin’ my daughter, and cheatin’ on my wife and punchin’ my best friend til he bled. No babies in microwaves neither.”

The steering wheel whines in Marty’s grip, “So we parted ways. She opened a restaurant in New Orleans around the time we were splittin’ up. She’s from a big, Catholic family so I didn’t see me fittin’ in there too well.”

He looks at Rust and is surprised to see Rust still watching him, “ And you?”

“I wasn’t looking for anyone. I was looking for a way out.”

\----------

The Cadillac tears through Beaumont like a bullet. Marty shifts gears and speeds down roads like a wraith. The faster they’re out of here, the better. Rust doesn’t say much when they get coffee past Beaumont city limits, but his eyes drift and the memories are there. Marty beat him to the punch, beat him to the finish with Ginger in tow. Marty drives like a mad motherfucker.

Marty still drives like a mad motherfucker. Like he’s drag racing the Devil.

There’s a moment between them - a bridge of memory and what might’ve been - when Marty flattens the gas pedal down, and they break from the line of cars like a dark horse in an endless run. Rust thinks of After. They were pacing around his apartment, volleying whiskey and story details between them. The story for the shooting board, the story they tell themselves, and the truth of what they know. Rust fills in his truth alongside a story he tells himself when he’s alone. He tells himself he was drunk and Marty was drunk and it wasn’t anything except something to put between what they found in the woods, and the ensuring turmoil of their lives.

Rust tells himself he’s glad he doesn’t have neighbors, That his mattress doesn’t creak because he doesn’t have a boxspring and he’s on the ground floor. He tells himself this is all he gets, and Marty surrounds him with the scent of old leather, cologne, gunpowder and blood. He forgets whose hands he sees in this memory-that-isn’t. Some nights they’re his, clenched into his mattress, and some nights they’re Marty’s.

He’s never written this down. If he never tells Marty, it’s always a secret. He’ll never tell Marty (at least he’s not sure) that other nights he dreams that Marty shows up at his apartment with a fifth of Jameson’s, right after he gets suspended. Marty says _did you know?_ in a tone Rust has never heard him use until twenty-twelve. And Rust answers _yes yes yes_ , and it’s Marty and not Maggie that he takes in his arms and pushes against the counter. Marty moans his name. Marty gathers himself and clears off Rust’s table of its murder tableau, antlers smashing on the floor. Rust watches his shadow hands drag on the floor in front of a dropped flashlight, the tabletop cool under his back as Marty’s mouth tattoos his skin with wine-dark smears down his unscarred belly, and tastes him. He’ll never tell how he’d dreamed of this. When sleep eluded him, he dreamed. And he dreamed of Marty and a dream that was just that.

 _What are you doing in here?_ Marty asks.

 _Waiting for you_ , Rust answers.

Marty’s unfinished question is always _did you know that you’re in love with me?_

Marty’s sole memory-that-wasn’t isn’t always the same. Just before Rust leaves with Crash covering him like armor, Marty asks _Are you sure you’re gonna be all right?_ and Rust answers. Marty kisses him and finds the three-star constellation on Rust’s body by touch alone. Rust kisses him back and Marty hears the leather of Rust’s jacket creak in time with his breathing. Sometimes they end up on the floor, with Marty between Rust’s legs. Other times they’re against a wall, and Marty can’t tell whose hands are spread against it. Sometimes he’s wearing Rust’s jacket, and he can see the rings on his hands. Other times, there’s a black bird climbing for the ceiling, and nail gouges in the drywall.

He tells himself he hasn’t always felt this way. He’s still terrible at lying.

  
They look at one another in the car, and the space between them is fuse-lit. A long, slow burn.

\---------------

“I’m not angry at you for holding on like you did, Marty, “ Rust says, as they curve down roads at Rust’s direction. Rust swallows, the click in his throat like a bone snapping.

Marty’s never seen Houston past its cop bars and strip joints. His bar tour between here and Biloxi was a greasy smear of cheap beer and perfume. It wasn’t ever a clean deal, even considering the story he told was a grand lie. But it was his life. He hung himself on the hook of that lie. Even after their fight, he never wavered from keeping their shared story as it was.

Marty’d thought about asking Gilbough if he could look at Rust’s interview. He’d thought better when he’d considered how that would’ve looked.

_If it’s the same story, why you need to see it?_

_Because I wanna see him tell it. I want to take my first look at Rust Cohle in ten years._

Marty thought he might have had something better to say to Rust after ten years than, “You change your hair?”

But it’s better he saw Rust alone on that road. If he’d watched the footage, he might have wept. Or laughed. Or thrown his cup at the screen.

He saw Rust alone in his storage unit. The cooler, the shelves, the macabre wallpaper. The antlers. The cot.

Rust and his sad, locked room. So much like when Marty met him, and saw how he lived. Decades of that would make anyone look forward to the end.

“I know now, “ Marty says.

“Know what?” Rust says, clocking street signs with his fingers.

“I’m not the good man I was told I was and I’m not the bad guy I thought I was.”

Rust says nothing, but he turns from the window.

“I’m both, somehow. A lot simpler to figure out.”

Rust makes a motion with his right hand, “Down here.”

Marty turns the car onto 2525 Washington Avenue and doesn’t think past what he’s said.

Rust tells him this is the place, and Marty parks.

\------------

  
Marty can add Glenwood Cemetery to his list of places he’d never thought to find himself. He falls in step behind Rust, watches their feet, their shadows blending with other shadows on the sun-drenched pavement. They pass groups on walking tours -- something Marty thought cemeteries only did on Hallowe’en -- and Marty sees services held in the distance. There’s none of the creepiness he associates with graveyards. He matches Rust’s slow stride and sees their shadows overlap.

This place is Paradise compared to the hole he and Rust dragged themselves out of.

Glenwood is a quiet Southern garden of leaves, whispers, and stone. Marty finds it his definition of tranquil -- a word reserved for sixers and a fishing trip. Oddly enough, Glenwood is familiar. He can’t shake the feeling.

There are sloping, white stairways, and fountains out of Gone With the Wind.

There are angels in Glenwood. Sentinel marble figures in repose. They’re everywhere. Marty sees one near the treeline, on a nine-foot pillar.

Marty startles and Rust turns back to him, eyes all over his face, “What?”

Marty shakes his head, “I, uh...I...”

Rust nods, “I know.”

“You know?”

Another nod is all Marty gets as he collects himself and they walk further.

Little girls and boys in black and white troop past them. People release balloons into the sky, and Rust looks up to see birds flocking among them. Red-breasted robins, and black crows.

“Ain’t this somethin’...” Marty murmurs. Rust wanders over to Marty who stands in front of a marker engraved with HILL in bold lettering.

There’s an angel on the grave, slumped over the stone block. Marty looks from the statue to Rust and knows now where the angels in his journal came from.

The walking tour reaches them, and Marty feels Rust take his hand as they back up for the crowd. Marty closes his hand around Rust’s as the guide informs everyone that Hill’s angel is known as the Angel of Grief. That most of the statues have nicknames.

“Where’s the other one?” Marty says to Rust, bent close enough to brush noses. “They’re in your book. Where’s the other one?"

Rust tilts his head off away from the crowd and Marty follows, their hands clasped together.

  
When Marty sees the Avenging Angel, and the walking guide tells her group how the angel got its name, he looks at the ground, and then at the hand folded in his.

“The silly story don’t matter, Marty, “ Rust says, noting Marty’s disappointment at the Angel’s revenge-driven origin. The one I drew doesn’t look the same anyhow.”

Marty squeezes Rust’s hand, and thinks that beyond this being a cemetery, he feels like he’s walking in a park. There must be acres of greenery, and he can see the boughs in the distance of the biggest oak he’s ever laid eyes on.

“Had a different sort of figure in mind for that sketch, “ Rust adds, and keeps walking, trailing Marty’s hand behind him.

“Oh, “ Marty says, and takes off his sunglasses. Rust smiles, just a little, and Marty feels Glenwood can keep all their marble and plaster imitations.

“I don’t just draw your hands,” Rust murmurs, and rubs his thumb along Marty’s wrist. Marty’s mouth dries up and he wants to blurt out _you’re beautiful_ like a love-struck dumbass on a summer day. _Has anyone ever told you that? Does it matter? I think you’re beautiful._

Twenty-three years on, and Rust hasn’t missed a step. He’s walked this route every night almost. He walks it in daylight. He’s walked it while sitting on the swing in Marty’s yard.

Section J. By the stream garden. Past a place named Old Strangers Rest. It’s a long walk, but Rust keeps on steady as Time.

There’s a foot-worn path between the rows that Rust follows. Marty lets go of Rust’s hand with a lingering touch. Marty stays on the main path. Some roads aren’t for everyone to walk.

Rust finds the granite square engraved _ **Sophia Grace Cohle**_ , and stands before it. His head bowed and shoulders slumped. Marty’s eyes burn and his shoulders ache. Rust sits on the grass with his legs folded underneath and places both palms on his daughter’s grave marker. When Rust lays down on it, Marty tastes blood on his lip.

He can’t hear what Rust is saying, and he doesn’t want to. It’s not for him. Passers-by don’t stop. Grief insulates everyone. No one looks. No one judges. Marty looks around and is struck by the thought that cemeteries are for the living. The dead are somewhere else.

Marty turns back to Rust, and sees Rust curled in on himself. For a second Marty thinks his scar has reopened, and halfway to Rust’s side, Marty knows that’s the truth. That Rust has more than one scar, and it will never truly heal.

He doesn’t give a fuck about his pants, or his goddamn knees. Marty’s beside Rust in four seconds, holding onto him. Rust leans heavy into him and Marty wraps him up tight. He whispers into Rust’s hair that _i’m here_ and _you’re here_ and _i’ve got you and i’m not going anywhere_.

Rust’s grief is soundless, but Marty feels he’ll have some bruises on his shoulders from Rust’s fingers.

Rust presses his face into Marty’s neck and says, “I lost her, Marty. She died once but I lost her twice. How is that possible? I know she’s not here. She’s not.”

  
No one pays any mind to the two figures on the grass. Grief is not a stranger in its own home - a vast one, with green grass and blue sky. Grief is a shroud big enough for two, even in daylight.


	37. Release

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is L-A-T-E.
> 
> Big huge shoutout to blackeyedblonde because the 11th was her birthday and I promised this'd be up by her birthday, and I WAS SO WRONG BUT HERE IT IS AND I HOPE EVERYONE LIKES IT.
> 
> Now I have to find a corner to die in, or something.
> 
> Rust and Marty's conversation at Doumain's bar is taken from Jack Kerouac's "Desolation Angels" -- as is the fic title and many other things.
> 
> The poem Marty reads in Rust's journal is by Jim Morrison from his collection of Notebook Poems. They don't have titles.

 

 

  Marty brushes fingertips over grass blades like a lover’s hair. Rust watches him do this and the sigh he lets out goes unheard, moving a leaf against Marty’s knee. There’s cold stone warming under Rust’s cheek, and the trees move their boughs and the sound is crashing waves and the dissonance is comforting. Glenwood has fountains where he’s rolled his pant legs and sunk his feet. Coins under his toes like unfulfilled dreams, winking silver and copper and gold.

Rust thinks he’s on his way to frailty. He has no coins to throw but he’d pitch himself into the water and wish for an end.

Three thoughts later he knows he won’t. His constitution against suicide holds up, and he’s in public, and Marty won’t let him.

His fourth thought is that maybe Marty would let him try, and haul his ass out of the water before it got serious.

A weighted drape of slippery linen and a waft of Marty’s soap and cologne settles over his shoulders. Rust squints as Marty rolls up shirtsleeves and adjusts his sunglasses. Marty looks over at Rust and pulls his jacket to Rust’s shoulders. Rust blinks, drowsy in his ebbing grief. The salty wave that overcame him now sits near his toes. He’d held onto Marty when the wave closed over his head.

 _I could sleep here,_ Rust thinks _. I could sleep if Marty watched._

Rust hears his own heartbeat in his ear that presses to the gravestone. He’s always able to sleep when Marty’s nearby.

Rust pushes himself up and hands Marty back his coat. Marty puts it back around Rust and adds his sunglasses too. Rust’s eyes are a bleary pink, and his sniffling took Marty down a flare-lit memory lane where he’d taken a bouquet of flowers from Rust and offered coffee and what understanding he could muster in return. Marty’d grabbed Rust by his tie and hauled him along into the house amid the questioning gazes of his little daughters. In hindsight Marty thinks he should have been gentler.

He should have been a kinder, gentler man when he was needed to be. Marty supposes he’s making up for it with Rust. He’s sure of that.

Rust keeps Marty’s sunglasses on. He brushes grass and leaves from his clothes, and bends down to brush the same from Sophia’s gravestone.

“Life’s exhausting, “ Rust says.

Marty blinks at him in the sun-dappled shade, “Yeah. It don’t wait for people to catch their breath.” A beat. Two. Then three.

“You all right?” Marty says, his tone tells Rust he knows the answer is a blend of yes and no and for now. Grief’s never static. Sometimes it leaves as quickly as it arrives. Other times it extends itself for days.

“Mmhmm. I guess, “ Rust says, adjusting Marty’s coat so it hangs off his left side like a courtier’s cape.

Marty starts back to the main road, leaving Rust to move in his own good time. Rust doesn’t take long, and when he’s with Marty once more, Marty says quiet-like, “You didn’t bring flowers for the dinner.”

It’s not a question. And Rust nods once.

“They were for her, “ Marty says, “ and you came to dinner instead.”

Rust looks down at his feet and back up at Marty, “They were. And I did.”

Marty gnaws the inside of his right cheek and turns toward a burst of noise. His nose wrinkles up.  
“Laughin’ in a cemetery feels wrong, I think.”

Rust starts off toward the sounds, “It’s not gonna wake anybody, Marty.”

Marty snorts, “Whatever.”

They pass Old Travelers’ Rest and a jubilant group in black and white formal clothing passes them like a parade. Two little brown-haired girls in white frills throw red and white petals around, and Marty finds the two people at the rear of the train are the bride and groom.

“Is it just me, or is a weddin’ party at a graveyard creepy beyond reason?” Marty says.

Rust watches the group nod at them as they pass, and the flower girls run up and offer them each a short-stemmed white rose.

“My auntie’s married now, “ the curly-haired one says, “Because she’s in love.”

Marty smiles a little, “Congratulations to her.” Marty takes the rose and Curly Sue beams at him. Marty dubs the other girl Winnie because she reminds him of that smart girl on that show Macie loved; she’d had that Fred Savage kid all over her walls.

Rust nods at Winnie, “Thank you, miss.”

Curly Sue steps back, her glossy, white patent-leather shoes clicking on the pavement, “Are you married?”

Marty turns to the side and covers his mouth, and doesn’t dare to look at Rust.

“No, “ comes Rust’s dry tone.

Winnie scowls at Curly Sue, “You can’t just ask everyone if they’re married. It’s rude.” Winnie scrutinizes Rust, and stares at his hands, “He doesn’t have a ring, so he’s not married.”

Marty says, “Check out Nancy Drew here, “ and the gap in his teeth shows. Marty holds up his right hand for Winnie, “Ain’t a weddin’ ring. So no dice here either, hon.”

Curly Sue outright blushes and skitters back to the trailing group. Winnie shrugs and sighs and Marty huffs laughter to himself, “Better go catch up.”

Marty watches the group round a bend in the trees and turns to Rust. Rust is staring at the flower with a faraway look on his face.

“Here, “ Marty says, and holds out his free hand for the rose, “You gonna keep that?”

Rust hands it over and doesn’t say anything when Marty says, “Wait here.”

Rust watches him go back in the direction they came, new tears gathering in his eyes. The flowers are gone when Marty comes back. Marty takes Rust’s left hand in his and starts walking.

“Where’d you put them?” Rust says, his throat not working quite right.

Marty pulls the jacket further up Rust’s shoulder and squeezes his hand.

\-----------  
They pass another bridal party, this time on the Beloved Immortals staircase. Rust notes the pose of the statue at the top and files it away.

“Guess it ain’t bad, havin’ people around here celebratin’ other stuff. “ Marty says. He hasn’t let go of Rust’s hand and Rust hasn’t prompted him to.

“Man does love his rituals, “ Rust says, marking the train of the bride’s dress down the stairs while photographers fuss and scamper.

“You moonlighting as an anthropologist?” Marty says.

“Just stating a fact. Everything starts as ritual. Carefully observed with certain rules. In other parts of the world, white is a funerary color. Brides wear bright colors like red or pink. People held feasts at funerals just like at weddings. Here it seems death is not a passage but a stop.”

Marty mulls on that, and brushes his thumb along Rust’s, “Go on.”

“We live in a culture that glorifies ways to ‘cheat’ death. Skydivers, base-jumpers, drag-racing. Extreme sports. People chalk up their survival to skills they don’t have instead of dumb luck. Other cultures see death for its natural place in people’s lives. It’s afforded respect and dignity, same as births and weddings. Death isn’t something to be afraid of. There are worse things, “ Rust says.

“Yeah, you’re right about that, “ Marty says.

 

\-----

Birds chorus in the trees, in the air, and on the stones. Rust sees Marty laugh at two sparrows jabbering and hopping on the stone head of a sleepy cherub.

They walk for a minute before Marty says, “So many damn birds. This is some Hitchcock shit. You know, it’s funny I never heard birds around --- “ He falters, and goes quiet a moment. Marty’s hoarse around the edges as he says, “I just...I didn’t hear any birds singin’. Lots of trees, but no birds.”

Rust sees Marty go back there. To that moment Rust said _Marty, this is the place_. The reluctant fear and dawning knowledge in Marty’s eyes.

“Mmmhmm, “ Rust says, and doesn’t speak of black starling spirals or the cawing he’d heard, of an invisible voice. That Carcosa is a bird-trap where small, sad nightingales impale themselves and all the rest beat their wings bloody on dirt floors and the passing darkness is the wingspan of of a muslin-cloaked carrion bird with knife-talons and a hatchet beak. A bird that feeds while the prey is still warm.

  
\------

When they’re back in the car, Marty asks, “There anywhere else you need to go?”

Rust says, “ No.”

“You wanna stay longer, maybe?” Marty says, and tilts his chin at Glenwood’s gates.

Rust turns to him, “What for?” It comes out harsher than he’d intended. “She’s not there. It’s a goddamned piece of rock with a name on it. It doesn’t make me remember her laugh, or the way she felt when I held her. I know she’s not here, and I know where she is, but that doesn’t make -- make it hurt any less.”

Marty blinks a few times and turns the key in the ignition, and Rust breaks a little more.

Marty clears his throat, “Okay.”

And that’s that. Marty doesn’t balk, or argue. Doesn’t call Rust on his attitude, even if Rust thinks he should.

Glenwood was calming, and yet Rust wonders where God is among the dead. How the living talk of Him often, among the trees and the stones, and Rust let their words pass around him like a breeze. He finds no evidence of God among people save for a convoluted disguise for their own weakness.

Where is God among the dead children? Where was God when His own Son was dying?

Rust watches downtown Houston slip past him like graveyard prayers. He supposes Joel Theriot was right. More and more, Rust comes to terms that the nearer to divinity anyone approaches, the greater the silence.

The void he’d slipped into had no noise. It was dark, and yet filled with Love.

Is God _in_ the void? Is _God_ the void? Rust ponders that as Marty drives, with some low sort of guitar tune on the radio.

Are God and the Void one and the same? An eternal echo chamber ricocheting the same voice back at itself for Eternity?

It’s a hard sell -- eternity to a man who’s met his end road. Harder to convince such a man that there was anything beyond that worth going toward.

Rust flicks his lighter as Marty turns up the radio.

No. God wasn’t in the void. He’d found his daughter, and his father. No one else. On the other side of the dark, there’d been only Marty.

Like right now.

“You okay?” Marty says, and Rust snaps his lighter shut. He pockets it, the metal gone hot in his hand and says, “I’ll be okay.”

“You hungry? Maybe somethin’ to eat?”

“Said I’m okay, Marty. Leave it.”

Rust removes the sunglasses from his face and folds them into the center console. Marty’s jacket relocates to the backseat.

“You’re wastin’ time,” Rust says as the interstate stretches out before them.

“You talkin’ to me in particular, or makin’ a note for yourself?” Marty says.

“Talkin’ to you, Marty, “ Rust says. He knows he’s being an asshole, and can’t help himself. Rust cycles through emotions like television channels. Anger. Grief. Confusion. Denial.

Rust sniffs at that last one. He’s never denied the finer points of being a prick.

To Marty’s credit, he doesn’t snark back.

“You’re not wrong. I did waste time. A lot of it, “ Marty says, “But I haven’t wasted a minute for a couple months now.”

Rust folds his shoulders forward and clenches his hands between his knees, and caves to the space inside the car.

“I don’t know how to be myself, anymore, you know? If I was ever anybody at all, I don’t have my shit together, “ Rust says.

The car slows into a long line of traffic. Marty thinks some sort of fender-bender, but sees and hears neither lights nor sirens.

“So, why not go with that? Nobody’s one thing all the time. Shit, I’m only now gettin’ my head around that and I’m fucking amazed you got this far, Rust. You don’t give yourself any credit for what you get right. Think that bad man bullshit was a story you told yourself. I sure bought it for myself, anyhow.

Rust meets Marty’s eyes and says nothing.

“I’ll help you, “ Marty says. “You wanna go somewhere else? Back to Alaska? Shit, you wanna move to Texas? I’ll help you. I just don’t want you gettin’ hurt again. I mean this is like your next life, right? New start? Somethin’ like it?”

Rust’s eyebrows go up and he leans back against the seat, “You got more to say, we’re gonna be in this car a while yet. Don’t quit talkin’ on account of me.”

Marty narrows his eyes, certain that Rust is screwing with him somehow, and jumps ahead.

“Been lookin’ through your books a little bit. And there’s this thing -- well, I had to look it up because it didn’t make any sense -- like, maybe you’re in shock? It’s not like PTSD or nothin’, but it’s like anaphylax -- oh, some shit like that. Fuck, I’ll get it, just gimme a minute.”

Marty leans on the horn when the sedan in front of them slams on the brakes. He cracks the window enough to fit his arm out and salutes the driver in a way Rust recognizes.

“Yeah, what the hell are you gonna do about it, asshole?” Marty says to the car in front of them.

Rust’s mouth curves, “Ontological shock.”

Marty rolls his eyes at the car ahead of them, “That a fancy phrase for givin’ someone the finger?”

When Rust puts his hand to his mouth, Marty thinks he’s going to throw up in the footwell.

“What? What? I’m bein’ serious, what the fuck are you doin’?”

Rust holds his sides and ,while Marty thinks he’s crying , starts laughing. It’s a foreign feeling, and his abdominals pull a little in response to his healing injury.

But it’s just so funny. _Marty_. _The look on his face_. Marty hit the nail dead center. He’d just fucked up the word.

It’s that scented meat conversation all over again. Trust Marty to muddle ontological shock with an allergic reaction.

Rust presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and thinks he just might rupture something.

He laughs harder.

Marty. The absolute certainty that he got it right. _Because it came out of one of his fucking books_.

“Rust. _What the_ _fuck_?” Marty says, incredulous, shaking him with purpose.

Rust opens his streaming eyes and sees Marty’s wondering smile.

And manages a watery one of his own.

“I’m okay, it’s just that --, “ Rust wipes his face with a sleeve, “ -- it’s not that you’re wrong, it’s just...” Rust lets out a cracked laugh, and breathes slow. His ribs ache, and it’s one he thinks kindly of. He hasn’t felt that sort of ache in a lifetime.

Rust quiets with the sure knowledge that Marty makes him ache like he never has before. There are pains worth having.

He coughs once, and sniffs, “Ontological shock, Marty, is the state of being forced to question one’s worldview.”

“Okay...” Marty says, as the traffic starts moving. Marty’s looking Rust over for signs of blood or injury, or perhaps brain damage somehow.

“Anaphylactic shock, or anaphylaxis, is an extreme, often life-threatening reaction to an antigen that the body has become hypersensitive to,” Rust says.

Marty chews the inside of his cheek and looks sidelong at Rust, “And how’s that any different than what’s goin’ on with you? You’re havin’ a reaction to modern life that you’re not used to. And you’ve always been hypersensitive, though I chalked that up to bein’ a prick.”

“Must be a lot of that goin’ around, then, “ Rust replies.

Marty snorts, “I’ll tell you, I was missin’ these PBS After Dark proclamations from you. I really was.”

Rust tucks his chin into his palm and grins out the window.

Marty catches sight of him in the passenger-side mirror and smiles, “So what’s the treatment for a bullshit allergy?”

“Pills. Alcohol.” A pause. “Patience. Honesty.”

“Last two, not the first two.”

“Yeah, “ Rust says, “First two don’t seem reliable.”

 

\---

 

Rust dozes while Marty drives. He wakes to the chime of gas station pumps and Marty humming some song Rust can’t place right away, even though it pokes at him, insistent.

The center console is a collection of loose coins, Marty’s sunglasses, dark licorice in clear plastic, and Rust’s keys.  
Rust unwraps the licorice and rips the soft candy into small pieces. He puts a piece in his mouth and lets the molasses flavour comfort him.

Marty remembers a lot about what he likes.

Rust climbs out of the car and stretches. He rolls the licorice in his mouth and bears down on it with his teeth. It's not match-lit and filled with nicotine, but it'll do.

The air hangs around his shoulders, leaden with dusty, hot concrete and diesel. Rust ducks back into the car before his shirt melts and waits for Marty amid the softer scents of almond soap and sandalwood.

He pushes buttons on Marty's radio, and watches blue L.E.D radio channels shuffle by. The first four are a mix of talk radio, and spirituals, and Rust stops on the fifth one and the deep guitar chords that followed him every day since the day he left Louisiana.

 

Miss Lucinda and her constant question : _are you alright?_

 

Every other time he'd heard it, he'd shaken his head. A firm negative. That he's not alright, but that's okay. He has none of what she sings about, and that's fine.

 

Now Rust's answer is _maybe._

 

The driver's door opens and Marty's outstretched hand contains a bottle of iced tea. Rust straightens up in the seat and takes the bottle. Lucinda's finishing her song, and he's a long time coming back from Memory Lane.

 

"Somethin' wrong?" Marty says, peering through the rear window as he slams his door shut.

 

Rust puts the sweating, plastic bottle in his cup holder and runs damp hands down his pant legs, "I'm okay."

 

Marty looks from Rust to the radio and back to Rust, "You seein' shit? Somethin' you heard? You're all pale, Rust."

 

Rust grabs the bottle from his cup holder and cracks off the plastic cap for _something_ to do with his hands that is far beyond what he'd _like_ to do with his hands right now.

 

He drinks the entire bottle and Marty doesn't think Rust even breathes. He gets out of the car and into the heat as the cold tea rips a hole in his forehead. Rust breathes deep and scrubs his hands over his face.

Marty's door opens and when Rust turns, there's Marty with his elbows on the car roof and his eyebrows somewhere in the stratosphere.

 

"Are you alright?"

 

Rust's hands knit together as he folds them over the back of his neck and pulls down. He's had meltdowns before but this is something else. This moment is solid. There's a weight to it.

 

There's no Before or After in this space. There is only _Now. Now_. _Now_.

 

_What are you going to do now?_

 

"I'm fine, Marty. Just drank too fast."

 

Marty stares at him, unconvinced and unblinking.

 

Rust shuffles back to the car and buckles up, while Marty moves with measured steadiness back into the driver's seat.

 

Marty reaches into the backseat and drops his jacket into Rust's lap, "It's a million degrees outside, and you're shivering. You're freakin' me out."

  
Rust shakes his head, "I'll be okay. I'll be fine."

 

He feels Marty's tension bleed away when they're back on the interstate. Rust watches the lines on the road blur together until the movement of the car puts him to sleep.

 

\----

 

Rust wakes to mid-afternoon sun, and the right side of his face warm through the passenger window. He blinks up at the tinted sunroof, the smoky glass dulling the sky. He yawns and undoes his seat belt.

When he's out of the car, he notes the strip-mall square and how it looks like a thousand similar places. Similar only in lack of details. Everything here sun-bleached or washed out with swamp water.

 

Marty's sitting on the table-top of a picnic bench, poking at a blue-patterned ceramic bowl with his chopsticks and a wide-mouthed spoon. He squints at Rust and waves him over.

 

"What's all this?" Rust says, all but slumping onto the bench.

 

"It's commonly known as food. Ingested mostly for energy, with a variety of flavors and --" Marty says, until Rust snorts and says, "Thank you."

“I could put a steer between two slices of Wonder Bread and call it a steak sandwich. My stomach is fucking eating itself, “ Marty says.

When Rust pulls the cover off his bowl, the wafting steam imperceptible in the heat, he smiles just enough for Marty's liking.

  
"Figured you might be comin' down with somethin', so why not go for some chicken soup?" Marty says.

Rust nods in some sort of answering way and digs in. What's come over him the past seventeen years has settled into his bones.

 

The soup disappears. Rust's chopsticks clatter into the empty dish. Marty laughs to himself while Rust blinks slow and starts to nod off in the heat.

He drowses, leaning heavy against Marty as Marty squeezes his shoulder. Marty tells him not to fall on his head.

  
_I'll be right back._

 

A scattering, repetitive chiming stops Rust from drifting completely. He doesn't mind.

  
Marty returns like he said. He loops an arm around Rust and drags him off the bench. Rust doesn't open his eyes until the car makes its unlocking noise. He drops into the passenger seat and wonders if there was anything other than chicken, noodles and spices in that soup.

 

Marty checks his pockets for his keys and starts the engine. Rust rubs at one eye and sighs with a contentment that's both strange and welcome.

 

Before Marty shuts his door, Rust hears the bells again.

 

From the jewelers' door chimes, next to their Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall.

  
\-----

 

The next time Rust wakes, the radio plays a song he hasn't heard since Paris. Jim Morrison's smooth, brass baritone and the strident symphony of The Doors.

 

It's _Waiting For the Sun._

 

Because of course it is.

Because he always has.

 

Marty looks over at him and Rust doesn't look away when Marty turns his attention back to the road.

 

\--------

 

Rust undoes his seat belt before the car stops moving. He watches the ripples on the river before he turns to Marty, to look past him to the neon signs of Doumain's bar.

 

"Said you needed to go here, right?" Marty says, "You want me to wait?" Marty's words are soft and even.

Rust shakes his head, "Don't need you to wait. Just some things I have to see to."

 

Marty nods, "Gimme a call. You need anything. You know where I live."

Rust smiles, a sliver of white, " I do."

 

Marty calls out to him before he shuts the door, "Hey..."

 

Rust leans into the open space, "Yeah?"

 

Marty's words are cautious at first, like footsteps on spring-thawed ice, _" I remember the daydreams of desolation and see how it happens all right. Everything is the same emptiness. Cody and I drive along blankly staring ahead, knowing this. Cody just runs the machine. I sit meditate Cody and the machine both."_

 

Rust finishes Marty's recited sentence like a movement of music, _"We know it all, we heard the heavenly music one night driving along in the car..._ "

 

Marty says, his timing perfect, _"Did you hear that?"_

 

Rust nods with his eyes closed, _" I had just heard the clangor of music suddenly in the motor humming room of the car. **Yes,** says Cody. **What is it**?"_

The passenger door closes and Rust leans on it, "You finished the book?"

  
Marty says, "Both of them, yeah."

\-----

 

Rust watches Marty drive away. He doesn't move until the car is gone.

Up until he'd gotten out of the car, until Marty bowled him over with shit that was verbatim from his books, Rust nearly changed his mind. That what's here will keep another day. That what he needs to check here is nothing.

He searches for his keys and pulls them out as he nears the bar entrance. He flips through them one-handed.

Truck key, bar key, storage unit, house key...and one other. A key bright as a new penny on a sunny day.

A brand new key.

For a brand new life.

  
\----

  
There are two people in Doumain’s bar. One is a middle-aged man in a grey t-shirt and khaki shorts, and the other is Nicky Doumain.

  
Nicky's tending bar, and the music is loud enough to split Rust's head.

 

"Whatever you took outta the jukebox, where'd you put them?" Nicky says, when Rust sits down.

 

Rust pulls two keys off his keyring. He puts them flat on the bar like coins.

 

"They're in a box in the back on the far left. I'm gonna need your help with some other things, " Rust says.

 

Nicky nods, "You can start by puttin' the juke back together."

 

\----

 

Two and a half hours later, over the din of George Thoroughgood, a traveling barfly inquires to Rust and Nicky _what's so damn hush-hush about trackin' hogs_.

Nicky and Rust answer : _pest control._

And that's answer enough.

Nicky helps Rust pack his truck. Tarps and bungie cords til nothing budges an inch. Rust asks about Robert. Nicky says Robert’s okay the more he’s around people. That he’s been staying with Nicky’s family, and that Robert livens up when Nicky’s son, Josh, visits. Josh is three years younger than Robert’s lost boy, and Nicky says sometimes Robert weeps and sometimes he smiles.

Rust thinks of the bones in Carcosa. They’ll pull bones from that place forever. Rust thinks of Robert when he sees Nicky’s downcast eyes. Does Robert ever think of finding his boy among the bones? What a terrible closure though. Is some sort of answer about an end better than the endless waiting?

There’s a fleeting weight in his shoulders. One that he doesn’t give voice to. He has the answers he needs. He knows where his little girl is, and it’s neither a grass-and-twig boneyard off the Creole Nature Trail or a marble garden in Houston. She waits for him somewhere else, and she doesn’t wait alone. His Pop will keep her company.

 

Rust says to give Robert his best, and to thank him for what he did. Nicky tells Rust _that feral hog you’re gunnin’ for, word down the grapevine says he’s vacationing in Florida. He crosses state line, I’ll give you a call._

Rust says that’s not what he meant by thanking Robert, but Nicky shrugs and says Robert knows.

Nicky asks if Rust’s gonna fix that damn tail-light. Rust says yes.

Nicky gives Rust a brand-new bottle of Jameson’s. Rust’s mouth quirks a little, and says thank you.

“You’re lookin’ better. Hope you’re feelin’ as such. And Robert wanted me to tell you,” Nicky says, with a hand on Rust’s shoulder, “ when your war is done, you go home. That’s what you get if you get out alive, and you’re lucky.”

_I hope you have a place. You got one here._

Rust starts his truck, and the engine almost drowns out Nicky’s incredulous _Fuck me, this thing actually runs. They don’t make ‘em like they used to._

Nicky tips him a salute, makes an _I’ll call you_ motion and points at Rust.

  
Rust nods once, and drives in the direction of home.

\-----

There’s a space in Marty’s driveway. Rust’s red truck fills it. He closes the driver’s door with firm finality.  
And something stokes up in him, the knowledge that he’s here now and the world around him and under his feet is real.

The light is on over the door. The kitchen light fills the window.

Rust finds his way in the dark well enough, but Marty left the lights on.

He wonders if the key will fit. When the door opens on smooth hinges and he steps inside, he closes the door and sags against it.

Something he’s carried most of his life is running out his body like water from a spring.

Rust shoulders his duffel bag and leaves the whiskey and keys on Marty’s pristine counter like an offering.

He takes off his boots. He peels off his socks, and tucks them inside.

The kitchen smells like sandalwood and oranges. The air is warm and thick and motes of color streak the air in front of him. Metallics. Bronze and copper and smooth, buttery gold.

Marty is everywhere in this house and Rust walks all the space in between. He revels in the completeness.

He runs fingertips over the spines in Marty’s bookshelves. He sees his books among the fly-tying manuals and the football photo collections. A book of poems between a coffee-table book of the Alaskan wilderness, and a dog-eared Creole cookbook.

Rust halts outside the closed door of the master bathroom. The light is on, and he puts an ear to the door. Steady on his feet, he listens to the water breaking on porcelain and Marty’s body. Marty’s skin, pink as rose quartz from the heat. He rests his cheek against the polished oak and tastes almonds and honey on his tongue.

He thinks of leaving. It’s a smoky whisper, and then it’s gone. He’d never get far. Not even to the front door.

  
Rust goes upstairs. He follows the music he hears.

Marty’s office. The walls done up in grey and a color of blue Marty said only Rust could pronounce. The music is from Marty’s laptop, open among a spread of files and paint samples. Emmylou Harris sings of an hour of gold, and Rust listens. He closes his eyes and the strap of his duffel is taut against his palm. Marty’s desk isn’t large enough for the room. There’s a space in front of the Azores-blue accent wall.

Space for another desk.

When Emmylou is done, Dave Alvin takes over. Rust carries his duffel bag in his arms and Emmylou’s song in his head. He hugs the bag and thinks of Marty even though the two are nothing alike.

He puts the bag in the upstairs bathroom. The walls are eggshell and the decor is navy blue. There’s nothing in the cabinets, so Rust puts his razors, and toothpaste and soap in Spartan lines by the sink to the sound of Dave Alvin’s gravelly tone.

Rust digs his toes into the plush carpet at the top of the stairs, his eyes on the still-shut bathroom door. He didn’t think of turning the handle.

He wanders into the spare room upstairs. He flicks the light switch and finds a palette of three blue sample cards with an orange Post-It stuck on them.

In Marty’s careful, block capitals, the note is RUST. And there’s a tiny question mark scratched out on it.

There are three cardboard rectangles containing bookshelves (some assembly required, with Allen keys, beer and cursing). There is a large, blue box in the furthest corner, by a picture window with navy blue curtains and a blackout shade. There are six blank canvases of various sizes, and a suede-covered sketchbook. Rust picks it up and presses his nose to it. He think of saddle leather, and Marty. Marty chose it because of how it smelled.

Rust goes back to the bathroom and shuts the door. He doesn’t lock it. He scrubs a day’s worth of travel from himself, careful around the scar at his belly. It doesn’t scab as much now, and the raised, white skin around it is smooth and healthy. He presses a little at it, and winces more out of reflex than any pain.

He brushes his teeth. He recognizes his face in the fogged mirror and wraps a towel around his waist. He leaves the fan on and walks back to Marty’s office.

He could play the chords if he had a guitar. Rust puts the pad of an index finger against the mouse-sensor of Marty’s laptop and says, “Miss Lucinda, I think you’re following me.”

She asks _are you alright?_ Rust nods along.

She asks the right questions, and all his answers are yes.

  
\----

Rust passes the master bathroom. He enters Marty’s bedroom. Rust places the new sketchbook and a pencil on the floor when he gets comfortable in the sheets. He keeps his back to the door, and wonders if he’s making a mistake.

  
It’s as if all of him knows Marty’s standing in the doorway.

Marty takes a tentative step, feeling exposed somehow in his pajama pants and faded t-shirt.

“It’s just me, “ Marty says, grateful that his voice works and that his lungs won’t collapse.

Rust doesn’t move.

“I’d know you, Marty. Of course it’s you. I’d know you blind.”

Marty digs a heel into the wood floor and feels winded. He makes it to the bed and sits down. He’s pretty damn sure at some point he’ll pass out.

Marty turns on his lamp and settles on top of the duvet. Then he goes to the main closet and pulls a blanket down from the top shelf. It spreads out with a heavy _fwup_! noise and covers the bed. Mostly for Rust, because by this time Marty’s ascertained Rust isn’t wearing a stitch.

Not even across his belly.

And the thought nearly undoes him. He’s torn between bolting out the door in his night clothes and bolting upstairs to sleep in the office.

_Chickenshit._

Marty tries again. He breathes deep and even and puts his glasses on.

“Lamp’s not botherin’ you, is it?”

And he hates how raspy he sounds.

“No. I’m okay, “ Rust says.

Marty turns pages in Rust’s journal. His fingers trace Rust’s handwriting. The sketches are another language.

All the sketches of Marty’s hands leave Marty feeling as if he should shut the book. That it ain’t right to look at drawings of his own hands and wonder just what was runnin’ through Rust Cohle’s head when he drew those same hands more than fifty times.

Rust wouldn’t draw his own, though Marty thinks he should. Rust has elegant hands, they’re slim and deft as bird wings.

Marty flips a page. More poems. Might be song lyrics, might not.

 _I bring these few rags_  
_back home this evening_  
_& lay them at your feet_  
_Miserable witness_  
_to a day of tragic_  
_sadness & disbelief_  
_Hope you’ll find me wanting_  
_Take me to bed_  
_Get me drunk (lay me out)_

  
Marty shuts the book and then his eyes. When he opens them, he sees Rust looking at him.

A soft line at his brow, and a tilt of his chin, Rust says, “Thought you’d read all that.”

Marty clears his throat, tired of his own cowardice, “I did. Wanted to read them again.”

He wrestles a pillow free from behind him and props it in the space between himself and Rust.  
  
Rust shifts closer, his eyes all over Marty, and settles down.

“That scar still itch?” Marty says. He’s glad his genuine question doesn’t sound mousy.

“No, “ Rust says.

“So, what was that you said before? About knowin’ me blind? You sayin’ that because I never shut up?” Marty says.

“No, “ Rust says, “Because I know you. I’d know you if I couldn’t hear you.”

Marty’s exhale whistles through his teeth. He’s heard such degrading, filthy shit from people that it never fazed him. Yet here and now, Rust saying how he knows him, he’s making Marty blush.

“How’s that?” Marty says.

When Rust looks up at him, Marty’s ears ring. His feet are tingling. His goddamn _knees_ are blushing.

Rust leans over and flips open the book, “Your hands. I’d know you by them. How we met.” Rust moves his shoulder up a fraction, “How we met, and how we were, and how we left each other. I couldn’t see you down there after a while, Marty. I couldn’t hear you though you must’ve been yellin’. But I felt you. I know you. _I know you_.”

Rust takes Marty’s right hand and folds it in his. He brings Marty’s hand to his lips and grazes the knuckles a great deal gentler than his face had ten years ago.

Down in Carcosa, Rust’s skin went waxy and grey, Here and now, he glows. His eyes slide closed and his breath comes slow when Marty kisses him.

From a tree canopied with serial killer valentines, to an overgrown jungle of singed grass, to a dusty parking lot, to a dirt floor, to the foot of twinned maple trees, a square of polished, engraved stone, to ashen sheets they’ve journeyed together.

  
If it wouldn't make him look like a lunatic, Rust would say Marty’s name all the time. He says it to himself, in his head, where no one else can hear.  
Marty's name has a flavour he's never known.  
The name has a heat, a tang, and a smoothness that Rust craves.  
When he whispers it into familiar skin, his body tingles and tightens as if cold. He burns from the sound of Marty’s name.

Rust says _please_   _Marty please_ until his voice leaves him.

He wants so much that his mind makes room for everything he wants to keep.  
Every breath of Marty’s name from Rust’s lips tumbles him further.  
Because that's what it feels like. He has it now. Every word, every breath unravels him.  
There's nothing beyond the feeling. Rust drifts, anchored by Marty’s hands.

Until Marty says his name, and everything crystallizes. The cycle of being undone and remade in breath. In names.

 


	38. Consummate

 

   Marty has his eyes on the road, his hands on the steering wheel, and his thoughts somewhere behind him in a gravel lot.

 

 He doesn't know why, exactly, he brought up Rust's book. Most of the drive from Houston had music. Music Marty hasn't heard in a decade. 

 

 The last time he heard Lucinda Williams was in oh-six.

 

 In two-thousand-six, Marty came home the day he quit C.I.D and ran the shower.  He remembers little of what happened, and the best he figures was something like total shutdown. His arms and legs felt like cold bricks.

He couldn't stop shivering.  Marty cries.  He weeps with his hands over his face, pressing his knuckles into his eyes.  His skin a livid pinkish-red when he steps out.  One t-shirt and pair of sweatpants later, he sits in front of his dark television screen and watches his reflection hide its face and cry, through parted fingers.

 

 He sleeps, and wakes with his throat rubbed away by sandpaper and his eyes dry and buzzing.  He goes to his kitchenette -- that sad corridor that he paces when sleep doesn't come -- and unplugs his microwave.   Marty puts it in the trunk of his car and takes it to Goodwill the following morning.

 

 Marty shuns his television for his laptop. It's nothing fancy, but it plays music well enough.  His stereo system from six or seven years previous didn't make the trip to his new life.  He'd smashed it in a fit of liquored self-pity when Maggie left him a crisp, legal envelope -- the kind with the red fasteners -- and several pages of documents culminating in a flat line for his signature.

 

 And it's poetic. His whole life is a series of flat lines. 

  Music lost its soothing allure. Marty doesn't eat for any sense of pleasure. He does nothing pleasurable. He has no memories he cares to relive during the nights he touches himself. They're all tarnished. 

He thinks of Rust once, while he's on his couch staring at the ceiling. One time he and Maggie met Laurie and Rust for dinner, and they all seemed happy.  

Rust smiled at him. Showed his teeth and everything.

That image sticks until Marty's emotions superimpose how Rust looked walking toward the C.I.D building on that last day. Rust had a gallows sort of walk. Marty can't say for sure he wouldn't have shot Rust if the mood had been on him, but in the moment of the memory he's glad he didn't.

 Marty sat up on his couch and pressed Play on his laptop to kill the silence and the blankness and Lucinda Williams spoke a question he'd heard in a barren apartment belonging to a man without a future and a splintered past.

 Lucinda asks _are you alright?_

   And Marty cries.

 

  ---

 

  Marty turns down the burner under his Alfredo sauce and adds shredded cheese.  His cordless rings and the call display reads **Maggie.**

 

   "Hello?" Marty says. He's been home an hour, and hoping Rust would call.  He steps firm on the worry that sits coiled in his gut like something yellow and scaly.

 

  "Marty, " Maggie says, "I've been calling most of the day. Your phone off?"

 

   Marty stirs his sauce and checks his watch, "Oh? I was out. Didn't want to get distracted on the road, you know?"

 

  "Have you turned it back on?"

 

 Marty wrinkles his nose. He hasn't. That might be why he hasn't heard from Rust.

 

 "I'm about to, yeah. What's up? Somethin' wrong?"

 

 Maggie's voice never wavers from its calm tone.  He's not used to that, and he knows why.

 

"No, I wanted to know how you are. I didn't think to come by, " she says. 

 

Marty takes his saucepan off the burner now that the cheese has melted through, and says, "I'm okay. Tired. Lots of drivin'."

 

Maggie's quiet for ten seconds before he hears, "Oh? Where'd you go?"

 

"Houston."   No point in lying.

 

"What for?"

 

"Rust had someone to see."

 

"Oh? Who?"

 

 And then Marty lies. He tells her he doesn't know, because he sat in the car waiting for Rust.

 

"How is he?" Maggie says.

 

"Okay, you know. He's walkin' around. Gettin' better every day, " Marty says.

 

"Is he there now?"

 

"Uh, no. He wanted me to drop him at his buddy's bar. The one he works at."

 

 Then there's a tone Marty does recognize. It's her _how can you be so dumb?_ tone.

 

"Marty. _You just let him go?_  He's still recovering. _And at a bar?_ "

 

   His pasta is much like his temper - boiling. But he dials down the heat and counts to ten and slams a lid on it.

 

 "What am I supposed to do? Keep him here? Lock him up? You can't make anyone stay if they don't want to, Maggie. Thought you'd know that."

 

 Her silence doesn't give him any sense of victory or glee. He's been cut so often by her barbs, they don't register.

 

  Once you've taken a hatchet to the chest, a snide remark by your ex is a paper-cut.  

 

  Marty doesn't hear the rest of the reason she called. He doubts there was one, really.  He hangs up, and salvages his dinner.

 

\----

 

 Detective Gilbough phones while Marty's washing dishes.  The detective asks about Rust.  Marty tells him _Rust ain't here just now._

 

Gilbough tells him Detective Papania has been talking to Betty Childress, up in River Oaks.  Marty's stomach curdles his recently-eaten pasta at the mention of her.

 

  "Bet your partner wishes he was talkin' to Rust instead. Ask him who makes more sense now," Marty says.

 

"Well now, see that's the thing of it, Marty. He wants to talk to Rust. More than that, he wants Rust to talk to Betty Childress.  Thinks she'd respond to him more, " Gilbough says.

 

 Marty holds back telling the detective he'd rather chew glass like it was a plug of tabacco than put Rust within one hundred feet of anyone with the surname Childress.

 

 What Marty does instead is pass his well wishes on to Gilbough and his put-upon partner and repeat the fact Marty had stated to call if there was a body. Gilbough says they're trying to head off any chance of there being any more bodies, and Marty stands firm. 

 

 " I don't work for you, and point of fact you'd know what Rust'd say if you were talkin' to him. I'll pass the message, but you and I know the answer."

 

"Somethin' to the tune of 'go fuck yourself', I imagine, " Gilbough says.

 

"Yeah, " Marty says, this time taking a shot of pure _schadenfreude_ at the other man's expense and enjoying the taste, "I love that tune. Can always hum a few bars for people who forget how that one goes."

 

Gilbough hangs up, and Marty goes upstairs to his office. He spreads files on his desk in descending order of importance, boots up his laptop, hits Shuffle, and stares at the wide blue wall. 

 

 ----

 

  Time stops when Marty heads downstairs and hears a truck in his driveway.  From his vantage point close to the kitchen, in the hall, he sees Rust exit the truck.

 

  So, Marty shuts himself in the downstairs bathroom and has a perfectly ill-timed breakdown.

 

  His knuckles turn white against the sink and he runs the taps to hide his laboured breathing.  He's not mad, and he's not crying, but he's splintering.

 He never expected Rust to come back, at least not so soon.   Marty splashes cold water on his face and then pulls the shower switch.  

 

   At the sound of footsteps, Marty turns to the door, stricken at the realization he didn't lock it.

 

  Marty stares at the brass door handle. He wills it to turn and yet to stay still.  If Rust walks in, then what?  His inner voice replies that he's gotta leave the bathroom eventually or Rust might break down the door and call the ambulance.

 

Marty sighs, then strips, and showers.  He doesn't cry.

 

\---

 

 "It's just me, " Marty says, as he stares into the dark that isn't dark. Not as black as he knows it can get.

 

  "I'd know you, Marty. Of course it's you. I'd know you blind, " Rust replies.

 

\---

 

 The room is nothing like the room of his fantasies. Those sad picture-shows behind his eyes when he can't sleep and when he does.  There are no blank walls and there's no desperation. 

 

 Rust held out his hand across the sheets, a collection of lines and shadows. Marty takes his hand and Rust rolls into him like waves in a cove.  There isn't a single kiss in a past fantasy that measures to the ones right now.

 

 Soft breaths and kisses, and names.  Rust manages Marty's name until it becomes a murmur, and then there's only Rust's arms around him.   His words play in Marty's head, over and over, and over.

 

  _"Shit, "_ Rust says _"Do I have to be dyin' before you touch me?"_

 

And Marty's not sure if he's leaning toward Rust or if Rust is moving to meet him, but he touches Rust and Rust wraps himself around Marty. Claiming him like ivy, and kudzu and gold.

 

There are soft places. Pillows, and blankets.  Rust's hands on Marty's belly. The backs of Rust's knees. The insides of his thighs.  Rust's mouth is soft.  More than silk and petals. Marty has no reference for the feel of Rust's mouth on his, nor the rest of his body.  

 

Rust's hair is soft against Marty's nose. The curves behind his ears.  Rust's breath comes soft and his words puff across Marty's face.  His hands aren't soft, but Marty welcomes them. Their strength, their elegance, how Rust talks with them without speaking.

 

Even his curses are soft. Rust levels them at the ceiling, into the join of Marty's neck and shoulder, and into Marty's hands when they curve against his face.

 

The soft smile on Rust's face as his lashes lower and he presses Marty's hands against his hips, a silent instruction to hold him there as they move together.   

 

 Their moans and breaths coalesce.  Rust murmurs, _"One body"_ in Marty's ear and Marty nods.  He doesn't know where he ends and Rust begins, and that's fine by Marty.

 

 They're separate and together. Different, and similar. Yin and yang.   Marty believes he's never known himself half as well as Rust knows him. He's never known himself until Rust.

 

   Rust says his name and Marty answers.   Rust makes a whole poem of Marty's name in differing tempos and rhythms.

 

    ---

 

   Rust speaks low in the brightening morning, against Marty's ear.  Two words. And then three.  And Marty smiles with his eyes shut.

 

     His dreams never ended like this, but his life is improving every day.

 

 

 

 


	39. Shroud

Marty wakes, surfacing through layers of sleep. Lucidity cleaving the layers like a scalpel. He’s chasing white trails in his mind’s eye. He thinks of ship sails, laundry on backyard lines, and sheets at crime scenes. A psychic thorn jabs into his thoughts and drags itself across them as Marty’s waking eyes scan the room.

 

“You moved,“ comes the soft voice from the corner by the closet. Marty hoists himself up on his elbows and sees Rust at the window, a cigarette burning orange in one hand and a pencil in the other. For a moment, Marty thinks of Justice, the statue, – draped in folds and holding scales. It melds with several stone statues from Glenwood and Marty breathes slow through his nose.

 

_Am I still asleep?_

 

Rust puts the cigarette in his mouth and snaps his fingers, “No, Marty. You’re awake.”

 

The previous hours flood back, and the ache settles into Marty again. It’s far from unpleasant this time.

 

Until his phone goes off. Marty scoops it and shoves it into the bedside drawer, where it buzzes like a wasp in a box.

 

“Who’s that?” Rust asks, around the smoke in his mouth, eyes turned back to his sketchpad.

 

Marty shakes his head, equal parts refusal and denial, “Nobody.”

 

Rust draws a thumb across the paper, “I got two guesses and it’s probably Gilbough. Papania’d pull his own teeth before he’d call either one of us by choice.”

 

The slump of Marty’s shoulders catches Rust’s attention, and Marty is still shaking his head side to side, oblivious to Rust’s statement.

 

“Marty?”

 

Marty rubs at his nose, and turns to Rust, “So, what’re you drawin’ at three in the morning?”

 

Rust stares long at him and relents, surprising himself, “You. But you moved.”

 

“Oh, “ Marty says, as though he hears such things every day, “Sorry.”

 

Rust shrugs, one-sided, and his sheet slips a little. Marty has a horrific thought that he’s still dreaming, and that Rust’s scar will open and he’ll bleed out on the floor. He scrubs a hand across his chin and goes into the bathroom.

 

Marty washes his hands and face, and feels his thoughts collect in a row, like bowling balls in a chute. They make the same sound as they cluster in his brain. He’ll have to tell Rust about the call. He’ll have to ask Rust what he doesn’t ever want to ask him. Marty watches the water spiral down the drain, thinkng of blue spirals, and drains, and black voids.

 

“Marty?”

 

Rust, at the door, where Marty left it open, and a hundred questions in his eyes.

Marty can’t look at him. Not with his thoughts feeding him whispers of how all his giving was for nothing. It’s all for nothing if he’s just fattened Rust up in order to feed him to...to ---

Rust doesn’t move when Marty sits in on the edge of the bathtub and covers his face like a kid watching late-night horror flicks.

 

It’s a twisted fairy-tale that plays in Marty’s head - Rust and the gingerbread house that isn’t. There are no sweet illusions, but painful death. Betty Childress, stringing Rust’s entrails like garlands; her mouth garish and slathered with his blood. Rust’s hollowed body, filled with flowers, and switchgrass, with broken antlers driven through his wrists and ankles. She’s the Yellow Queen, screaming “OFF WITH HIS HEAD.” Rust, headless, on a throne of bones and branches, with all the King’s men drinking from his skull and living forever.

 

And Marty, crying on a dirt floor, covered in blood, red-handed and smelling of his own piss and fear. The smell-taste of pine freshener in his throat, and the endless laughter for eternity. If he tells Rust about what Gilbough wants ( _what Betty wants, what Errol wanted...what the King desires),_ Rust might say yes because it’s Marty asking. Why should Rust think Marty of all people, _good, kind, Marty Hart_ , would lead him to his doom?

 

Panic slams into Marty and it’s a bitter relief. If he dies on this bathroom floor, Rust won’t have to do any of what Gilbough wants, because Marty will never ask him. Dead men ask no favors. He almost smiles as he tips forward, ready to split his head on the heavy edge of the cabinet.

 

“Goddamn it, “ comes the voice, connected to the body Marty collides with. “Honestly, you need some sort of smelling-salt, fainting couch, Victorian drama bullshit, Marty.” Rust pulls Marty up, “Christ’s sake, you’re steppin’ on my fuckin’ foot.”

 

With his eyes cast down, Marty sees Rust pull the trailing sheet free. And something clicks.

 

Marty straightens, steadies himself and locks down the errant thought from his dream. He’s got it now.

 

And he opens his mouth to thank Rust, but Rust all but flounces from the bathroom and over to the bedside table. Marty, on what felt like foal-fresh legs a moment ago, bolts after him and comes up short to Rust’s left arm barred across his chest and a warning on his face that Marty hasn’t seen since Rust threatened, conversationally, to snap his wrists.

 

Rust answers the phone, flat and to the point, “This is Cohle.” It’s a full two minutes of Rust nodding to himself before he speaks, “When and where?”

 

Marty blanches and his kneecaps turn to water. Rust wrangles him, one-handed, toward the bed where he collapses, panic breaking over his ankles and thighs like ocean surf.

 

Rust nods, and says, “All right, then.” Then he hands the phone to Marty, and sits next to him. Marty all but sags to the floor, panic-drunk.

 

“Yeah?” Marty says into the phone, wavering a little but growing steady. “Just got in now. Fuck if I know where he went.”

 

Rust pats Marty’s knee and goes to get his sketchpad. Marty watches the sheet trailing on the floor and could scratch his brain to ribbons from the itch that kicks up at the sight of it.

“An hour. Don’t fuckin’ barter with me. It ain’t some fuckin’ bargain, “ Marty says, irritation scraping his throat like sandpaper. The anger is calming though. Marty feels it in his chest, expanding like a bellows. “I ain’t his fuckin’ minder, neither. Rust agreed to your psycho play-date, doesn’t mean I gotta like it. Is Papania with you? Think I might like to rip him a new one, if I could find space on his face for it.”

 

Rust laughs at that and Marty about drops the phone at the sound. He looks over to see Rust shaking a finger at him before lighting another cigarette.

 

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Fine. Yep. Deal.” Marty ends the call and makes like he’s going to throw the phone at the wall, but Rust glides up to him and folds the cellphone out of his hand and replaces it with the butt-end of his smoke.

 

“No need to break shit, Marty, as much as you’d like to, “ Rust says. Marty drags off the cigarette, notes that there’s a rule he’s broken again. So much for no smoking in the house. He gets up and goes to the window, jimmying it up with some force. Marty leans on the sill, tapping ashes into the mug Rust set there. Marty touches the pencils lined in a neat row by the mug and sighs, the ember of the cigarette flaring as he inhales again.

 

Rust shuffles up to him, and Marty breathes out, “Nice toga,“ around a stream of smoke. A beat, and then another, “Your foot okay?” Rust looks down and pulls the sheet back. No impaled antlers, and no blood. Marty feels the nicotine ramp in his blood, and dance with something else.

 

“Foot’s fine. What’s goin’ on with you?”

 

Marty shrugs, smokes a little more, and rolls a pencil between his fingers.

 

“Why’re you always drawin’ me?” Marty says, to the pencil more than anything, “I ain’t nothin’ worth ---”

 

Rust does grab his wrist at that. Marty watches the blur of Rust’s tattoo strike at him, and Rust’s fingers grind into him, talon-tight.

 

“ _Bullshit.”_

 

Marty shakes his head a little, “Do you know what you agreed to? Do you know what you’re walkin’ into?” He stubs the cigarette out, making no effort to free himself from Rust’s grip, “Papania don’t know. Gilbough neither. You’ve got an idea, but you don’t know, Rust. What she’s really like – and I wasn’t gonna tell you, because I don’t want you going. I want you to live, man. And she’s gonna eat you. Whatever good thing you’ve found, she’s gonna bleed it out.”

 

Rust’s grip softens, as his eyes widen.

 

“You draw me like I’m some kinda wonder, and I’m none of that. Not if you’re going to see her. And I don’t mean to sound like you’re some kinda china doll, you ain’t. But you’re all I got, Rust, and I wouldn’t be any kind of worthy if I agreed to you going to see her. So I wasn’t gonna tell you – I wasn’t gonna ask you.”

 

Marty’s wrist drops from Rust’s hand.

“I can’t keep you here. But I ain’t gonna hand you over. I’m not makin’ that decision. You go anywhere, it’s your decision. You wanna snap my wrist, you go ahead, “ Marty’s rambling now, fervor building, “but I _promised I wouldn’t --”_

 

Rust steps into him then, and Marty lets him. He lets Rust slide the pencil from his hand.

 

“What’d you promise?” Rust asks, as Marty holds him.

 

“Promised I’d be with you whenever you went out on that rope you walk, “ Marty murmurs.

 

“Don’t remember you sayin’ that, “ Rust replies, “And I remember near fuckin’ everything.”

 

“Well, I didn’t promise _you_ , Rust. I promised myself. Yet to see if I’m the only person I can fuckin’ keep my word to.”

 

Marty’s fear flows out of him like smoke. It stains the air around him, and then trails out the open window. It spirals, eel-shaped, the shade of old bruises.

 

Rust reaches out and shuts the window. He steps back a little and gathers the pencils off the windowsill.

 

“You gonna help me keep my balance out there, then?” Rust asks, taking Marty’s wrist gentle as feathers this time.

 

“You’ve never needed me for balance, Rust, but -- “

 

It’s calculated as it is cautious, Rust stepping back as Marty steps forward, the way the sheet tangles in Rust’s feet. But there’s Marty, stepping in, turning and catching him as they tilt, and spin, landing safe on the bed.

 

The rest is unspoken. Rust’s touch telling Marty that they have time and Marty’s answer is they shouldn’t waste it.


	40. Little Details

Marty looks down the backstretch of the last decade, and there’s Rust. And now, in front of him, there’s Rust.

 

He remembers the shift in his thinking, how he wanted to leave Rust to his devices, and not help him. Yet in that storage locker, after he’d put his gun away, leaving Rust felt as impossible as stopping time.

 

Marty breathes slow, determined to see whatever Papania and Gilbough need done _done_. But it’s still some time yet, the digital read of his alarm clock going from 3:37 to 3:38. They’re not due out in River Oaks for another twelve hours.

 

He stretches out on what’s forever in his mind, his side of the bed, and watches Rust.

 

“You moved. _Again._ “ Rust murmurs.

 

Marty flips him off, lazy, with a slow shake of his head, “The hell are you doin’ with those pencils?”

 

“Drawing you.” Simple. Statement of fact.

 

Marty’d rather look at Rust than anything else, but curiousity wins out; some parts of him will always be greedy for everything he can get. The knowledge that Rust is here, and wants to be here, gladdens Marty. That familiar pull. That Marty’s never quite been good enough for anybody, but he’s _good enough_ for Rust – who’s the best man Marty’s known. More like the _only_ man, but Marty knows that’s beside the point.

 

He tugs his t-shirt in place and rolls on his side, peering at Rust’s sketchpad, and flushes, “Nice white whale there, Ahab. I take back what I said about the hands bein’ weird. You can draw those all you like. But that, “ Marty points, “is...it ain’t nothin’ pretty.”

 

Rust is quiet, save for the scratching of pencil to paper. The line of Marty’s neck. His drawing is, of course, Marty, asleep in the bed. Rust pays particular attention to Marty’s profile, and the curvature under the sheets.

 

“Cameras. Photoshop, “ Marty suggests.

 

“Not the same, “ Rust says, his pencil steady as a scalpel.

 

“Couldn’t just add to the hair and, you know, take away the...” Marty’s finger doesn’t touch the paper, but Rust follows the curve Marty alludes to.

 

“What’s wrong with it?” The pencil stops, Rust sets it down. He looks at Marty, and there’s the weight of that stare.

 

“It’s not the drawin’ part, it’s just that I don’t look --”

 

Rust waits.

 

Marty’s quiet.

 

Rust shifts in the bed and settles on his right side, facing Marty. He turns to a fresh, white page and offers a pencil to Marty.

 

Marty leans away, as if the pencil is a loaded pistol, “And what am I supposed to do with that?”

 

Rust taps the rounded end on the page, “Draw something.”

 

The wary look on Marty’s face pulls a tiny smile from Rust, “You can draw anything. Anything in this room or anything you think of. It don’t need to be perfect.”

 

Marty takes the pencil, casts a skeptical look at Rust, and begins.

 

 

 

The tattoo on Rust’s arm. Goddamn it. For all the shit he threw at Rust about sketching his own hands, it’s the thing Marty picks. For a first time sketch, he’d never dream of attempting Rust’s face. Marty makes light lines on the paper, thinking of Rust’s eyes, but focusing on the tattoo.

 

“And what, exactly,” Marty says, “is this gonna accomplish?”

 

“Comfort zones are lethal, Marty, “ Rust says, “you don’t learn nothin’ when you’re comfortable.”

 

Marty’s sure Rust is screwing with him until Rust says, “Figured you’d try it. You’re good at little details.”

 

Marty puffs a little at that, and continues. Rust notices what Marty’s drawing and moves the arm closer.

 

“It’s not lines, it’s tones.”

 

Marty chews at his lip, “How’s that?”

 

“It’s not like a cartoon.” Rust turns slightly and makes a circular motion around the tattoo, “No dark lines.” He sits up and reaches to the table at his own bedside and swipes another pencil from the tabletop, and his pocketknife, from the drawer. He unfolds the blade and pares down the heavy graphite tip, widening it. “Darker tone. “ he says, going back to Marty and showing him how to lean the point across the page, not in a line, but in a gradient of tone.”

 

Marty switches pencils and his hand is steady down the page.

 

“What were you saying, to Gilbough? About an hour?” Rust says, content to watch Marty concentrate and relax into the motions of sketching.

 

The pencil wavers, and then continues, “We get an hour with Miss Congeniality. Don’t mean we need to be there the whole time. But we have that hour. If there’s nothin’ going on in that sixty minutes, we are free and clear to stay the fuck away from that circus, “ Marty says.

 

“Why does she scare you?”

 

The pencil stops and Marty looks at Rust like this is a forgone fucking conclusion.

 

But something clicks, again, in Marty’s mind, like so many puzzle pieces fitting together.

 

“It’s like I said, you can’t know why til you finally know why. Maybe she won’t fuckin’ scare you, but she fuckin’ haunts me. Papania says she’s all snooty to him and flat-out gives Gilbough the silent treatment. She scares me because I saw what she is, Rust. Like, the tail-end of insanity. This woman won’t hang on, she’ll fuckin’ let go and laugh about it.”

 

Rust nods along, “And?”

 

“And I keep feelin’ this dread. Ain’t anxiety. It’s dread. Like this weight. Like we won’t see the scope of this thing til you see her.”

 

Rust rubs between his eyes, “But why does that scare you?”

 

Marty puts the pencil down, his eyes on the sweep of feathers on Rust’s skin.

 

“She scares me because this whole thing feels loaded. That what’ll tilt it in her favour is us going there. I can’t explain any of it, and it sounds batshit, “ Marty hisses in air through his teeth, like breathing is painful. “I feel like I’m gonna lose you, Rust.”

 

Rust nods to himself, while Marty tells him about his nightmares. Marty fidgets, picks up the pencil again, doodling while he speaks. Marty tells him how he, Marty, is always too late. The Childress place has no phone. He gets lost in the house. Rust pictures a transplanted root system snaking through every door, effigies hung of bones and twine.

 

Betty Childress traps Marty. By the time he gets out of the house and into the depths of Carcosa, it’s purple twilight and he falters in the dark as he searches for Rust.

 

Marty’s voice cracks and he and Rust lock eyes. Rust glances down at the sketchpad, at the crude spiral bleeding from Marty’s pencil tip. Marty’s eyes flare and he seizes the paper, meaning to rip it in half but Rust stops him. The real bird on Rust’s arm covers the drawing and Rust clamps down.

 

“Don’t,“ is all Rust says, “But you keep going.”

 

The pencil shakes in Marty’s fingers like a tuning fork as he describes in horrific detail, ( _little details_ ) what he finds in the throne room. The circle above ( _flat circle, eye of the void_ ) flares bright and makes all the shadows deeper, pools of pitch.

 

Rust, impaled on a throne of antlers, crown of thorns, flowers, switchgrass, and yellow silk.

 

There are ten stab wounds in Rust’s abdomen. One for every year he and Marty were apart.

 

The flare peaks and he’s too late, too late, too late.

 

Betty Childress closes in on Marty’s flank and Billy steps out with his hatchet. Caught between them and thinking only of Rust, he’s frozen. There’s a basket in Betty’s hands, petals of some sort, and a long white sheet draped across one arm. She throws the petals, in a parody of celebration and drapes Rust in the sheet, small roses blooming through the white, from his blood-soaked shirt. The antlers making an incongruent, broken shape beneath the draping sheet.

 

Billy Childress points the hatchet at Marty’s left hand.

 

“Hold it out, “ Betty sings. “It’s dangerous and it needs to come off.”

 

By the time Billy swings the hatchet, Marty’s always awake with screams teetering on his teeth.

 

 

Rust leans further across to Marty and pushes the paper and pencil aside. He pulls Marty to him, holds him tight.

 

“You weren’t too late. And you and I aren’t done. That ain’t anyone’s decision but ours.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into posting TD fic. This has been kicking around inside my locked room of a brain, and I've finally let it out. This fandom is so fantastic, I just had to jump right in.


End file.
